PyChess Tournaments forum

I never said it is the best :) I said there are lots of more or less unbalanced variants people like a lot (zh, atomic, etc.)
"Balanced" is one aspect of a game only. Aesthetics of the starting position is another one. Historical roots counts as well.

www.chess.com replaced Capablanca's chess by Gothic chess because Capablanca's chess has got defects in the starting position. In www.pychess.org, if Gothic chess cannot be made as default for starting position, then at least Carrera's or Bird's or Embassy or Conservative can be considered.
If historical roots count as well, then Carrera's chess dates back to 1617. This starting position is one of the 960 different possible rearrangement positions of the home rank pieces of Capablanca's chess with the pairs of bishops starting off on opposite coloured squares for each of the two players and with the king starting off in between the two rooks for each of the two players and Carrera's chess has got no defects in the starting position.

@asdfisuahw: Capablanca's chess is not fairly unbalanced in favour of white player. Ed Trice wrote this in a discussion in www.chess.com variants forum.

Ed Trice got a patent for Gothic chess in 2000 and he submitted a proof tree that Capablanca's chess is a forced win for the white player. He ran the proof tree in 2003-2004 for 8 months in 20 computers and proved that white player always ended up winning at least 5 additional pawns than black player.

I am not sure about Capahouse, but according to Ed Trice, at least Capablanca's chess is a forced win for the white player by starting off right with the move of 1. d3.

From 2020 onwards, Gothic chess is renamed as Trice's chess to avoid confusion with a medieval-themed 8×8 chess brand.

@gbtami: By the way, what chess variant do you mean by 'zh'? Is it crazyhouse? If it is so, then why is it abbreviated as 'zh' and not as 'ch' (CrazyHouse)?

Az Illion said: crazy house -> "zee house" -> z h

> Ed Trice got a patent for Gothic chess in 2000 and he submitted a proof tree that Capablanca's chess is a forced win for the white player. He ran the proof tree in 2003-2004 for 8 months in 20 computers and proved that white player always ended up winning at least 5 additional pawns than black player.

The problem is that this is nonsense. The way to prove that white wins is to find the game theoretical value of the starting position. This can be done in different way, e.g., via an exhaustive proof search/tree or a tablebase approach, or some hybrid solutions. Letting engines run that tell you an educated guess (like +5 pawns) can be interesting hints, but in the end they really are nothing more than educated guesses (after all to my knowledge his capablanca engine is much weaker than mine, and I do not even trust my own engine's evaluation). Of course everyone can have a preference for one or the other setup, but pseudo-science never is a good guide for decisions.

The capablanca setup might still be more unbalanced, even objectively, but as mentioned before that is just one of many aspects. In practice for human players this hardly matters, because playing strength is way more important. E.g., you can feel free to play against Fairy-Stockfish level 8 in capablanca chess on pychess as white and check if it is too easy to win. In the end the choice of the setup mostly is a subjective decision, and there are good reasons to then simply stick to the capablanca setup as the most well known one.

@Diwaditya: According to Ed Trice, Capablanca's chess is a forced win for the white player by starting off right with the move of 1. d3.

Please take a look at this conversation for more information about the strategy that is needed for the game play.
groups.google.com/g/jocly-community/c/E3ZMSGZBrHg/m/duxUut7gAgAJ.

@ramanvis1988 can you link the "proof tree" that proves white wins? Also, your google groups link is broken for me.

@asdfisuahw: The Jocly community google groups link works out fine for me. If it is not working for you, then instead of clicking that link, copy and paste the URL of that link in your web browser and then try out.

I do not have the proof tree with myself and it is not part of my work. I just reproduced what Ed Trice discussed with me at the Jocly community google groups and at the www.chess.com variants forum.

If you really want the proof tree, then you can contact Ed Trice. He is available for being contacted at Discord or at www.chess.com variants forum where his user name is NuclearLightning. You can discuss with him in the forum or send him a private message.

www.chess.com/clubs/forum/variants.
www.chess.com/forum/category/chess-variants.

By the way, the proof tree is more than 2 TB of data to the best of my knowledge. I don't think that it is available as handy and readily be loaded into the computer for reviewing of moves. I think that it can only be used in proving that a particular starting position of a chess variant is a forced win for one side.

@ramanvis1988 I suggest you to type the following words to google search: edward trice scam. You will be surprised.