After looking at it for a short while, they can. Ignore the first pawn / don’t take it if in the center. If on the sides, they just played to your plan. Attack right or left side near the end of the board and trade till you reach the bottom. If they don’t react to you doing that, they lose material while you keep it. Can’t decide which is better - the king side or queen side. Attacking kingside means you have one pawn less to take, queen side means the queen gets into the game faster and gives you a bit more flexibility. But ya - one rook at the last rank and it’s just a matter of time - each pawn can only move one, while your pieces have an easier time. Bonus points for getting a knight to do a smothered check mate, otherwise two rooks, rook queen on the backrank is GG. Watch out for the “scholars mate” with a pawn - that’s possibly the best move by white since you cannot avoid it by ignoring it. Then again, it’s on the side of the board and you can get rid of your pawns in an equal trade. Similar situation on the queens side, with them getting the queen, but then it might not be as important? There seems to be a few tricks to take too.
There is a variant of chess with 36 pawns. The front side squares are empty, and two in the front, where king and queen are for Black. Black has all of their pawns and white has no king. The game is harder since you cannot just beeline for the king as I have mentioned above. Also, in horde chess the pawns that are on the 1st and 2nd rank can advance twice, unlike normal chess rules. So ya, possibly a black victory exists
Was actually pretty interesting. I tried to let black get to an evaluation depth of 24 most of the time. White I just pushed whatever pawn it picked, except one time I took a free bishop and it was evaluated as a game losing blunder, so yeah engine definitely can’t handle this properly. Most of the time black just scooted around its own side, but it occasionally sacrificed a piece that messed up the pawn structure and let it take 2 or 3 total. The king also danced around preventing promotion and ended up capturing like 5 pawns himself. The wall was simply too much to handle though and as soon as the king was pushed out of the corner it was mate in 15.
It depends. I played hyper aggressive and black absolutely tore me up from behind, then again a little more carefully and traded black down to nothing with over 20 pawns left. Game is actually legitimately interesting lol. Would love to see two skilled players playing it.
I wonder what stockfish would say about this position
+12 for Black supposedly (though it won’t give me a suggested move)
Haha, I don’t think I believe that black could win!
I don’t think stockfish knows how to calculate it since it’s an illegal position. There’s no way white loses this
After looking at it for a short while, they can. Ignore the first pawn / don’t take it if in the center. If on the sides, they just played to your plan. Attack right or left side near the end of the board and trade till you reach the bottom. If they don’t react to you doing that, they lose material while you keep it. Can’t decide which is better - the king side or queen side. Attacking kingside means you have one pawn less to take, queen side means the queen gets into the game faster and gives you a bit more flexibility. But ya - one rook at the last rank and it’s just a matter of time - each pawn can only move one, while your pieces have an easier time. Bonus points for getting a knight to do a smothered check mate, otherwise two rooks, rook queen on the backrank is GG. Watch out for the “scholars mate” with a pawn - that’s possibly the best move by white since you cannot avoid it by ignoring it. Then again, it’s on the side of the board and you can get rid of your pawns in an equal trade. Similar situation on the queens side, with them getting the queen, but then it might not be as important? There seems to be a few tricks to take too.
There is a variant of chess with 36 pawns. The front side squares are empty, and two in the front, where king and queen are for Black. Black has all of their pawns and white has no king. The game is harder since you cannot just beeline for the king as I have mentioned above. Also, in horde chess the pawns that are on the 1st and 2nd rank can advance twice, unlike normal chess rules. So ya, possibly a black victory exists
I got white at+.4
Signal sucks too much to upload but I’ll play out suggestions and see how it goes.
Was actually pretty interesting. I tried to let black get to an evaluation depth of 24 most of the time. White I just pushed whatever pawn it picked, except one time I took a free bishop and it was evaluated as a game losing blunder, so yeah engine definitely can’t handle this properly. Most of the time black just scooted around its own side, but it occasionally sacrificed a piece that messed up the pawn structure and let it take 2 or 3 total. The king also danced around preventing promotion and ended up capturing like 5 pawns himself. The wall was simply too much to handle though and as soon as the king was pushed out of the corner it was mate in 15.
This has to be the best case outcome, lol
It depends. I played hyper aggressive and black absolutely tore me up from behind, then again a little more carefully and traded black down to nothing with over 20 pawns left. Game is actually legitimately interesting lol. Would love to see two skilled players playing it.