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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f4! :: Bird's Opening

White wins 28 (47%)
Draws 11 (18%)
Black wins 21 (35%)

With the recent release of the book Play...f4!, I decided to research the Bird opening. Although common in certain circles it is still somewhat Unorthodox. Basically you open with moving your King's bishop's pawn to f4! Opening up a weakness but taking a command of the e5 square. After I ran the small tournament (w/adjusted ratings) I found a common theme in most of the opening formations and it looked like this:
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After noticing this formation I tried to achieve this in some rapid games and had some great results. Once I realised what the 'plan' was I quickly overcame my opponents. Suprising what one little thing like a formation can do for your game. Of course I followed sound opening principles like key squares and opening tactics. It was great.

So the tournament went good and I was able to use my recently acquired FRITZ 11. Wow, this program is great, it looks great and runs even better. The results looked like this:

f41 2008
Fritz 11 ***** 0½1½½ 11111 111½0 11111 16.0/20

Rybka 2.3 LK 32-bit 1½0½½ ***** 110½0 1½110 11011 12.5/20

Deep Shredder 10 UCI 00000 001½1 ***** 10101 10111 9.5/20

HIARCS 11.1 UCI 000½1 0½001 01010 ***** 1½½10 8.0/20

LoopMP 12.32 00000 00100 01000 0½½01 ***** 4.0/20

Fritz won! I was happy about this since all the engines were running at their max elo ratings. With the help of Chessbase Lite, I can now publish the games in HTML format in a easy to use PGN viewer. The PGN can also be downloaded there. Click the link below:

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