Single Comment

Very similar in spirit to Peasant's Revolt is the following:

. q . q k . q .
p p p p p p p p
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
P P P P P P P P
N N N . K N N N

I don't know if this variant is already listed on these pages, or not. Again, it is not really a variant; it is normal Chess starting from a different opening setup. The setup is unreachable from the orthodox setup, however, so perhaps it qualifies as a sub-variant. In that case, I would propose the name 'Charge of the Light Brigade'.

At first glance it looks the game is heavily biased in favor of black. After all, conventional wisdom has it that a Queen is worth three Knights, or even more (Q=9.5, N=3). And here you have only two Knights for each opposing Queen. This does not take into account the elephantiasis factor, however.

I tried this with engines, and it seems the given setup, with 6 Knights is about even. With a 7th Knight on d1, there is little doubt that the 3 Queens virtually do not stand any chance at all, which in itself is already spectacular. Most Chess engines count themselves leading by +5 to +8 Pawns with black in that case. As a consequence of such gross mis-evaluation, most normal Chess engines are pretty poor at playing this too. It required a specially re-programmed engine that sets the piece values Q=9.5 and N=5 (rather than the usual 3) to do well with white. In that case normal Chess engines (even the very best) lose more often than not with black, even against 6 Knights. If black also knows that it is favorable to trade one Queen for two Knights, it becomes much harder to win with 6 Knights, as it is difficult to always avoid such trades. It could be that valuing the Knights even higher, so that you would rather give up Pawns than allow a Q vs. 2N trade, would be an even better strategy, and make this position a definite win fo white even with 6 Knights.