[chess39]

Spot on with castling and pawns! One idea is to allow pawns to jump from 1 to 3, I believe that’s how it’s done in horde.

Nice setup ideas! Beating the bot is quite hard, so maybe you are professional? :) If you want to make the bot even smarter, you can increase depth and think time in settings

[gus_massa]

Some will guesses, because guessing is free:

* I like the idea of using a lot of Bishops to snap a Queen or Rook in the first move. That's all my plan! And then try to lose material slowly, and win before the computer can compensate the difference.

* Looking at one of the fists game of Starcraft of AlphaStar, I guess that a lot of Bishops are overpowered for the computer, but difficult to use by a human. They are nice for the first few moves, but later they are too difficult to use for humans.

* A set of 13 Knight is probably better for the computer. It may make Magnus cry like a baby.

* I'm still surprised that Stockfish is so good in ridiculous scenarios.

[gus_massa]

* 13 Bishops at the 3rd and 4th rank + King at the 1st rank is very good. I'm getting probably a 75% winrate :) . Enough to be (slightly) angry when I lose or draw, instead of super mega happy when I ever win with the old strategy.

It depends on the current computer method that usually puts a Queen and a Rook on a vulnerable starting position, so I guess it can be counter.

Anyway, the bot plays badly when it is hopeless, like after loosing 2 Queens in exchange of 2 Bishops. At my level of play, the opponent can always make a mistake, so even in stupid bad situations a good idea is not to trade material when loosing. I'm not sure if it's possible to modify the bot to assume there is always a hope. (Anyway, the bot target my Bishops of the color with the smaller amount. If there are only one color of Bishops it's a draw.)