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First of all, Derek, I hope the posting I made did not, in any way, show disrespect towards your opinion, research, nor criteria for choosing the opening setup you did. The length and tone of your post indicates that you may have been personally offended by my posting. I did not mean any offense towards you; I was merely pointing out that I have different ideas about what makes an ideal opening setup.

I think I need to clarify some tthings so you can understand me better. Anything in italics like this is something you wrote. So, let me make some minor clarifications:

The color-bound pieces imbalance (e.g., queen and archbishop both on dark or light spaces)

'Colorbound', for me, has a very specific meaning. I use Betza's meaning for colorbound: A piece that, for the entire game, always has to be on the same color. A bishop. for example, that starts on the white squares will always be on the white squares for the entire game, since it can not make a move going from the white squares to the black squares. Netither the queen nor archbishop are colorbound; both pieces can reach any square on a blank board in two or three moves.

As an aside, I like your using 'what squares can the power pieces go were they the only pieces on the board' as an evaluation criteria for evaluating an opening setup.

you have a vast number of positions to choose from (12,000+ according to Reinhard Scharnagl)

Actually, we only have 72 positions to choose from (see the beginning of this thread again).

Edit: It looks like the beginning of this thread got eaten, so, again: I observed that all of the various Capablanca opening setups proposed over the centuries have the following three features:

• Symmetrical with the rooks, knights, and bishops.
• The rooks are either in the corners or one file away from the corners
• The king is always in a center file

There are only 72 possible opening setups that meet all three criteria.(End edit)

An undefended pawn can, with perfect play by white (the player with the first-move-of-the-game advantage) over a number of moves irrefutably result in a stolen pawn despite perfect play by black

As I recall, the evidence for that assertion was very questionable. An undefended flank pawn will not result in a proven win for white. It might make the opening a little more tactical; for example, in Narcotic Chess (RQNBKMBNAR), black might be forced to develop his marshall side knight in order to defend his archbishop pawn.

Again, please do not take my postings personally, and thank you for your insights.

- Sam