Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Dec 31, 2009 12:56 PM UTC:
What you are asking for is not fairness, but stability. The two have nothing to do with each ther. And indeed, Chess is by nature an unstable game, where advantages tend to grow with the move number. The quality of earlier moves has a higher weight in determining the outcome than the quality of later moves. Take away someone's Queen on move 3, and 'restoring' the balance by taking away the opponent's Queen on move 33 will almost certainly leave him in a lost position, as the opponent hs been hammering on him with an extra Queen for 30 moves.

So in practice the game will be decided in favor of the first player who has a stretch of luck in the first-move lottery. But even if the first coin flip would fully determine the outcome, it would still be a far game. Just a less interesting one.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Fair First Move Rule in Chess

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.