I've often wondered this. There certainly are some starting positions where Black does not have nearly as many options as normal chess, but whether white has a forced win in any of them would be interesting to know.
White advantage in Chess960
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Nov 20, 2009
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#4
So then, it seems to me that if there is a substantial white advantage, it hasn't been found yet. (Except in position 518, the one that goes RNBQKBNR, in which white has a slight advantage. Among masters, it is much more significant, and tends to be a bit drawish for some people's tastes.)
Very funny Meadmaker.
Meadmaker has a good point, however in my opinion the first move has a slight advantage, but not a game changing one. And there is no 'forced win' from the starting position, black can always win.
>>Renegade
Too bad we cant just turn a strong engine loose on 10 positions as an example, but none of them I have played with understand the castling rules.
By the way, what does Rybka say the white advantage in standard chess is worth in pawn turns?
If there is an advantage, there is a way around it, at least in multiple game matches. Each player can get his turn playing white with each setup.
I let Fritz 8 analyze a bunch of positions to a depth of 14, and it found 2 of 20 or so that it assigned more then .25 of an advantage to white, position 1239 and 2558. Both positions are fairly similar in the reason why Fritz thinks black cant just copy without a disadvantage - I wont try to describe it, but it might be worth a look; I found it sort of instructive to analyze a bit.
Of course, Fritz 8 isnt the strongest and I didnt let it run all that long anyway.
Has the game been analyzed enough to determine if there are any position where white has a major advantage? Is there any sort of database of played games that would demonstrate such an advantage?