Actually as TCEC, the 10th season, is currently on (at the time of me writting this comment stage 1 is approaching it's end). During it I though at an alternative to the many openings of the initial setup :)! In priciple you start the game with regular pieces but with an material imbalance, which in the classic point count 1,3,3,5,9 is balanced. I though one side should always start with exactly 2 or exactly 4 bishops for keeping pair. An example would be replacing the queenside rook with a knight and add 2 pawns for that side on the the central files (if white add pawns on d3&e3). I came up with 20-30 (have not exactly counted) such examples. What do you guys think about such orthodox chess tournaments? Of course there should be a double round robin comeptition where 2 engines play the positions in reverse for example if in the above example (assuming a competition for say 20 engines) stockfish plays white with NPP for r, then in round 20 (the away round if you'd lie) then stockfish play black with r for NPP. The crux of this is that no extra programming should be done :). It's just you have to create other initial positions :)!
Actually as TCEC, the 10th season, is currently on (at the time of me writting this comment stage 1 is approaching it's end). During it I though at an alternative to the many openings of the initial setup :)! In priciple you start the game with regular pieces but with an material imbalance, which in the classic point count 1,3,3,5,9 is balanced. I though one side should always start with exactly 2 or exactly 4 bishops for keeping pair. An example would be replacing the queenside rook with a knight and add 2 pawns for that side on the the central files (if white add pawns on d3&e3). I came up with 20-30 (have not exactly counted) such examples. What do you guys think about such orthodox chess tournaments? Of course there should be a double round robin comeptition where 2 engines play the positions in reverse for example if in the above example (assuming a competition for say 20 engines) stockfish plays white with NPP for r, then in round 20 (the away round if you'd lie) then stockfish play black with r for NPP. The crux of this is that no extra programming should be done :). It's just you have to create other initial positions :)!