horde chess

What is horde chess about? I like to play nucleair chess a lot against my smartphone. There is this great free app.

Huh? What happened to the comments?

Sorry. I sent them in a private board mail here to you.

There is no guide to horde chess, and since I am the only one, others read my comment (the only guide online).

Thinking about twice, if that is the case, it could be good publicity for this forum. But probably only 3% of those who read would contribute?

Try this game at lichess.org

I promise: it is really fun! I dont know why, but it is much better fun than other chess variations. 

I am still only playing horde chess. Meanwhile I reached a new ATH at 1855 horde chess rating.

This is better than 88.9% of all 1148 horde chess players.

I guess against a good player I meanwhile struggle more with black, even though I read somewhere that black has better chances. But if someone handles the white pawns well - it can get very tough for black.

I found out a bit more about white pawn play by logical reasoning. With black I am less sure what to do. 

Watch out! You just shared your secrets!

Meanwhile, I hardly play normal chess anymore. Horde chess rules!

I dont know why, but I like it much more. Maybe it is because it is new. Something else than the "always the same".

It became calm here in this forum. Never mind. For horde chess, I havent read anywhere a good guide. I found out most things about it by my own observations. Meanwhile I am rank 18 amoung 1100 players. A GM-titled player has about the same horde chess rating that I have, which is meanwhile 2100++ horde rating points.

I keep my discoveries in horde chess a secret, but if you want to know - I tell you per email.

For the old classic chess, I found something out, too. I found it by playing horde chess, but it is something I can directly apply to ordinary chess, too. It seems to be important:

be nice to your pawns!

I can not say this discovery boosted my normal chess rating, but... well, I guess that if I would play normal classic chess again, I would play it slightly different now in a few situations - due to my insights in horde chess. 

I try to be more precise: the further your pawns are up, the more valuable they are. However, this isnt quite true: every time you spend a move on a pawn move, you invest into this pawn. That is why it is "more valuable". But simply pushing a pawn forward doesnt make it more valuable. It is rather the case that it should be more valuable if you push it. If it doesnt add value to your pawn, then it isnt worth to be pushed. And this is the secret in normal chess, too. 

Dont push your pawn if it doesnt make it more valuable.

It very much depends on the position, though.

Try to become horde chess world champion!

I can maybe become "LM" = Lichess-Master. They used to give it, but due to manpower, the administration is currently not giving any LM's.

I am meanwhile at 2200 horde chess rating, which puts me at rank No #12 out of ~1300 active horde chess players. Some titled players are behind me. Getting further up is tough, though - the best player (No 1) is rated 2800! So there is quite a spread between the top players.

Every now and again, I do play normal chess, too, but I still love horde chess a lot more. 

Is engine fraud possible at Horde chess?

It is possible, but less common. If people cheat, they open another lichess.org tab and use probably the built in analysis tool ("stockfish-8-horde-chess-engine").

I was once playing a game I got the message "cheat detected" and the game was counted as a win for me. My opponent got banned. 

But in other cases, some opponents played the game to the end, I lost, I reported the game, and the opponent got banned within 24 hours.

Cheats are not as often happening in horde chess as in normal chess, but cheating can and does happen. 

So how does Stockfish evaluate the starting position?