01
It is too well studied
Opening knowledge and memorization are disproportionately important. At the highest level, familiar positions are analyzed to great depths and players often take risks simply to avoid them.
zerochess
Zero opening preparation. Zero starting evaluation.
Why ZeroChess?
The fixed chess starting position has two fundamental problems.
02
It is not balanced
White begins with a first-move advantage. Fair matches need an even number of games or another form of compensation, and tournaments with an odd number of rounds cannot give every player the same number of games with each color.
Why not Chess960?
- It addresses opening preparation only partially: 960 positions can still become familiar.
- Its starting positions remain unbalanced and can increase White's initial advantage.
- Castling is less intuitive in some positions.
The ZeroChess answer
Start from a random position that evaluates to zero.
Both players make a small number of forced legal moves from the standard position. A modern chess engine checks that the resulting starting position is balanced. From there, it is standard chess.