I won Horde as white - for the first time!

It's VERY hard to win horde as white. Its a very unbalanced game, but still, its possible to win if your opponent mistakes.

https://www.chess.com/variants/horde/game/14799734

tbh white was easier to win for me

all you need to do is figure out when to strike,build a pawn wall,have patience and wait for opponent to strike first(sac a few pieces to get a rook or a queen to the back rank,since the back two role of the pawns are basically useless unless they survive till endgame,forget them,push the front pawns and attack

remove the defender when possible and then push up the pawn chains,even if the first wave fails the second wave will come fast as you have build up the pawn wall,start attacking from both sides and just PUSH

getting 1 pawn promoted is enough to draw the game,2 is better and have a chance at winning as you have no king

(obviously I dislike playing as black)

I disagree that white is good.

And @rune_raider you will so make him hate horde (if he already hates black)

lol

dang, lot of history here. Also I'm pretty sure everyone hates me when I play horde as white and inisist that it is a balanced game🙄🙄🙄but anyway, will look @ game...

The thing is, horde has very low drawing margins. 3 fold repetition or stalemate are extremely rare, and are usually the result of a blunder from what I understand. When drawing margins are this slim, it becomes extremely likely that one side wins by force with perfect play from a theoretical point of view, even if it isn't too unbalanced in practice. This is even more true in a game like horde where the sides are not symmetrical.

Crazyhouse also has this problem btw. Draws are an extremely rare occurrence unless someone makes a pretty serious blunder as with crazyhouse you basically have to have a perpetual for the game to become a draw since stalemate or the 50 move rule both require some ridiculous conditions to take place.

You can argue about who wins in horde (in crazyhouse it pretty clearly has to be white that has the advantage because of the first move, meaning he should win in theory), but it's pretty clearly not balanced from a theory point of view.

That being said, the lichess explorer says that white wins about as often as black in 1. d5 e6 2. d4 exd5 3. exd5 a5 4. e4 at a 2500 level, meaning it's very likely not as unbalanced in practice as it is sometimes made out to be anecdotally, it's just that it's hard for it to be a draw due to the very rare set of conditions that have to occur to make a horde game a draw.

Ya, I had no idea what this “rook shuffle” thing is.

While that game did indeed turn into a draw, black had a mate in 6 and blundered it away. Obviously there are draw margins, but they're extremely slim. I made it a point not to comment on who should win due to myself not being knowledgeable enough to make any kind of informed comment on that. I do however think I'm knowledgeable enough about gametheory to say that it's extremely unlikely to be a draw with perfect play from both sides due to the requirements that have to be fulfilled to produce a draw. And if it's not a draw with perfect play, it means that *someone* has to win, therefore the game is by definition imbalanced. I would be very interested to see if you had a few draws of any kind that weren't the result of some blunder towards the end that you could point to.

                          Ok

Very interesting. Perhaps the conditions to reach a draw don't require quite as contrived of a position as I believed. I still think the draw margins are quite slim, but maybe not as slim as I'd previously thought.

🙄😲😦🤔🤭🤗😓🥶😱🥺😜

M2, as all of u lectured me abt it🙄🙄😬😬😥😥😓😓🤗🤗😜😜😇