Evaluation of the starting position

I've been very curious about this for a long time and I haven't found any material or discussion about this on the internet.

This is a quick analysis I did with Deep Fritz 13 as the main engine and some powerful co-engines (I have no idea how these interact, if they do at all):

1. d4 is supposed to be the suggested move by the strongest engines, they say. My analysis also show this. But I would like to hear from you if you know more about the subject. What evaluation do we get from a really deep analysis with Houdini, for example?

You're looking for the best first move?

We have decades of top level games, which is much more useful in deciding on the value of opening play than a brute force search.

Of course one must take other considerations than these evaluations while actually playing chess.

Still, doing such an analysis is interesting for the sake of computer chess itself.

It's also very interesting to know the mathematical advantage of playing as white rather than black in a different sense than "just" statistics of top games, based on what our very powerful chess engines tells us.

When your pondering with an engine over the best move for move 1, I think its safe to say you have become too reliant on the computer in general.

The evaluation of the first moves depends on the evaluation criteria put into the engine. It is not to be mistaken with the objective "bestness" of the first move, as such a thing has not been found out yet.

What I really would like, mattyf9, is to see chess strongly solved. We're far away from that, but isn't it interesting to see the computers we have do theit best? I think it is.

Alright, set it to run, and come back to us in a few billion years with the evaluation.

Scottrf wrote:

Superzaldor wrote:

What I really would like, mattyf9, is to see chess strongly solved. We're far away from that, but isn't it interesting to see the computers we have do theit best? I think it is.

Alright, set it to run, and come back to us in a few billion years with the evaluation.

Hahaha. At least a few billion. I love how ppl wonder this nonsense.

Okay, there is no "best" first move ; but  perhaps this can help thinking, to count the lines and names in the index of "named openings" in The Oxford Companion to Chess.

I quote : Opening lines given on the following ( 19 ) pages are included ( in this book ) because they have names.    All major openings and most major variations have names.

Out of a total of 980 lines, 618 lines have e4 as first move ( with 841 named openings ).

288 lines have d4 as first move, giving 392 names.

29 lines : c4 with 38 names and 22 lines Nf3 with 29 names.

This forum is about the starting position only, so I do not go into details about splitting the figures up in e.g. Slav, Dutch, Nimzo-Indian, Sicilian, Caro-Kann, Spanish, Italian etc.  unless somebody likes it...

When there is a relation with the names, I should say e4 is most popular.