26 August 2023

Chess018 and the CCRL

In last week's post, Chess018 Is a Thing (August 2023), I suggested an idea for a follow-up post:-
One more idea that could be easily tested is to look at the chess018 start positions (SPs) on CCRL. Which SP is statistically best? Which is worst? What are the most popular first moves for each SP? Sounds like another post is taking form.

The following chart lists the 18 SPs in the chess018 family. The first three columns are from my own database of SPs. The last three columns are from the CCRL (see the sidebar for a link).

The column 'Dist' ('Distance') is a metric I whipped up when I first started investigating chess960. It was explained in the following posts:-

Some day I hope to find a use for 'Dist', e.g. a correlation with some other observation. Today is not that day.

The CCRL numbers for chess018 should be compared to the same numbers across all 960 SPs. At first glance, nothing unusual appears. Somewhat curious is the one SP where the score for White is less than 50% -- the traditional start position. I imagine it has something to do with the engines not using a book.

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