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Jeremy Lennert wrote on Sat, Jan 21, 2012 07:43 PM UTC:
As has been repeatedly pointed out, CGs directly behind a pawn wall is a uniquely favorable starting position; those CGs have very high POSITIONAL value, but even if they win (which I'm not confident they would) that proves nothing about their MATERIAL value.  Start those pawns on rank 3 instead of rank 2 and which side do you think will win?

And I can't actually perform your test, since you've removed both kings from the board and haven't stated a new win condition.  Which makes me pretty confident that you haven't actually tried this test either, since that issue would be pretty hard to miss if you actually sat down and played.  So even if this were a fair test (which it's not), it's not a test that has actually been performed, so to say that the CG is 'measurably' above Camel is just a bald-faced lie.  You have yet to measure anything.

How about this?  Give each side 8 pawns, a king, and either 6 camels or 6 contragrasshoppers.  Put the kings on their usual starting squares, and distribute the rest of each side's pieces RANDOMLY throughout their half of the board (I guess we'll forbid pawns on the first rank just so we don't have to pick a special initial-move rule).  I won't even require that the camels are split between different colors.  Pawns promote to queen.  If a king starts in check, his side gets the first move, otherwise pick randomly.

I'm sure each side will win some possible random positions.  I'm reasonably confident the camels would win the clear majority--but I haven't tried it, so I could be wrong!  (I suppose I really should look into getting some software to run computer tests like Muller has been doing...)

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