Bird's Opening :: Sturm Gambit

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White wins 10 (33%) Draws 6 (20%) Black Wins 14 (47%)

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I was a bit shocked by these numbers. I felt this gambit is very playable for white and I have had great results in 1 min games on chess.com. To be honest though, a bunch of the wins for Black weren't in the opening. Some very strange positions came from this gambit. Think of a cross between the Queen's Gambit Declined and the Bird Formation I posted a few posts back. Very interesting stuff.

I ran the tournament with 4 engines at their max elo. Rybka won over Fritz 11. After getting Fritz 11 I figured it would tear through all these other engines. I figured wrong. Rybka and HIARC still far very well. There were 30 games with a 4 2 time control. All games can be viewed online by click the link at the top. The results were:

sturm1 2008
Rybka 2.3.1 32-bit ***** 00½1½ 11010 111½1 9.5/152

Fritz 11 11½0½ ***** ½0½10 111½0 8.5/153

HIARCS 11.1 UCI 00101 ½1½01 ***** 00001 6.0/15 50.504

Deep Shredder 10 UCI 000½0 000½1 11110 ***** 6.0/15 41.50

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Bird's Opening :: 1.f4 e5

White wins 56 (47%)

Draws 38 (31%)

Black wins 26 (22%)

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Another reason I was researching the Bird's Opening was because a post in the Unorthodox Opening group on Yahoo. They were discussing From's gambit. I wanted to see if the computer would play the From. It did in some games but the results were varied. As you can see in the stats, White can hold after this gambit. What suprised me the most was that the engines would constantly move the King after a Queen exchange in order to get a Pawn in the center (see rule #1). Even after giving up the right to castle white still has a decent game. Although the position was a bit 'different' I started to see common themes and formations. The King came out often and Black castled Queenside. This was an engine match between Rybka 2.3.1 and HIARC 11.1. Rybka won with : +46 -36 =38 . This is a position that is common in the late opening.

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White has given up the right to castle and Black has just castled Queenside. Despite the looks of the position, White seems to be better. All 120 games and the PGN can be found below.

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