Can Stockfish play 1.e4 e5 2.Ke2 against other engines and win?

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KinkyKool

Apparently it is a book opening and there is a thread about it here https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/1e4-e5-2ke2

So I wondered what would happen if Stockfish plays it? Can Stockfish do anything fancy with it?

I set up an engine tournament with the following conditions:

Rules

-Stockfish plays ten other engines.

-Stockfish will be White every game, and each game will begin from the above position with Black to move.

-Time limit 5mins base + 5 sec bonus per move.

-No opening book.

Results

Stockfish 10 x64 lost against the following engines:

Fire 7.1 x64

Deep Shredder 13 x64

Ethereal11.52-x64-nopopcnt

Komodo 13.01 x64

Houdini 4 Pro x64 A

Xiphos-0.5.4-w64

Stockfish 10 x64 won against the following engines:

Deep Rybka 4.1 EEE42 x64

Roce39

Scidlet

Trex

Observations and Conclusion

Stockfish simply tended to later play Ke1 followed by Kf1. Often followed by h4 in an attempt to mobilise the King's Rook since castling isn't possible.

The modern strongest engines crushed Stockfish. However Stockfish was still able to beat Deep Rybka (last updated in 2011 if I'm not mistaken) and older, weaker engines. I'm guessing most players without a master title would probably also lose to Stockfish playing this opening.

Sample Game

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