Starting position #576
Back-rank setup: BBQRNKRN
SP-576 · BastionScout — King off-centre on c or f with a knight starting on the rim (a/h).
Move the pieces right on the board — full Chess960 rules, castle by dropping the king on the rook.
Position features
The king starts on f1, the rooks on d1 and g1, the queen on c1.
Castling short simply swaps the two pieces: the king on f1 and the rook on g1 trade places.
A bishop starts in the corner on a1: it has a single diagonal, which the b-pawn unlocks, running out to h8.
One second-rank pawn starts with no defender at all: h2.
The setup belongs to the BastionScout family; read right to left it becomes position 287.
The engine's main line opens with c4.
Every sentence here is computed from the setup itself and can be checked on the board.
Balance
MBI 100 Morozov Balance Index: 100 of 100 — class A — most balanced.
- Engine evaluation of the starting position: 0 centipawns for White (depth 49, 400 000 000 nodes).
- Rank 2 of 960 by balance — 1 is the most balanced start.
- In 50 self-play games White scored 50.0% (95% CI 36.6–63.4%).
- Balance band E — even · dynamics along the play-out: equalizing
- Evaluation along the engine's main line (53 half-moves): +12 → 0 → 0
- Deeper check (4 000 000 000 nodes, depth 66): +13 cp, +13 cp against the base run — not confirmed at depth · S — slight edge
- Sign verdict: White edge — the minus was noise
- Self-play v2: 100 games at 1 000 000 nodes per move — White scored 50.0% (95% CI 40.4–59.6%)
Position facts
- Mirror twin: position #287
- The king starts on f, the rooks on d and g
- King and rook are neighbours — castling from adjacent squares feels unusual
- It becomes the daily position in 1341 days
Puzzles from this position
- Attack on the uncastled king: pawn to g5 (h4·3) — Chess960 specifics · 780
- Attack on the uncastled king: bishop to e4 (b1·5) — Chess960 specifics · 780
- Attack on the uncastled king: rook to f4 (d4) — Chess960 specifics · 780
- Winning blow: rook to a2 — Chess960 specifics · 970
- Winning blow: pawn to e5 (f4·18) — Chess960 specifics · 1060
- Attack on the uncastled king: queen to e5 (e3·2) — Chess960 specifics · 1200
- Mate in 2: queen to f7 (g6) — Chess960 specifics · 1320
- Mate in 2: queen to g6 (e8) — Chess960 specifics · 1450
- Mate in 3: queen to f5 (d7) — Chess960 specifics · 1630
- Mate in 3: queen to h6 (c1·3) — Chess960 specifics · 1980
This position appears in course day 70
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Commentary
The engine calls this one dead level: +0 centipawns after a search to depth 49. The line is worth playing over: c4 c5 Bxh7 Bxh2 Ng3 Bxg1, with the bishops taking rook's pawns on both wings and one of them ending up in the corner. Short castling swaps the king on f1 with the rook on g1; the long one moves the king alone, because the rook already stands on d1. The pawn on h2 has no defender, and e2 leans on the king alone. A knight sits in the corner on h1 with g3 as its only move, the second on e1, and the queen is on c1.
Written from the measured facts above and checked against the board before publishing. All 960 positions have one.