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Kamikaze III. If the lone queen checks, she wins.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Jeremy Lennert wrote on Wed, Oct 12, 2011 07:35 PM UTC:
Proving that red does not have a forced win would be equivalent to proving that white has either a forced win or a forced draw.  Even if that's true, it would be quite a lot of work to prove.  However, even if red has a forced win, the game might still be nontrivial if it is sufficiently long and complicated.  (Remember we still don't know for sure whether either player has a forced win in orthodox Chess.)

I'm pretty sure red can win within 3 moves if white opens with anything other than e3.  Most openings allow 1...Qe8, 2...Qxe+.  If 1.e4 then Qd4 threatens Qxd2+ or Qxf2+ and white can't block both.  If 1.d3 or 1.d4 (so the Bishop can jump in front of e pawn), then 1...Qh5 2.g4 Qxg4 and 3...Qxe2+ can only be stopped by 3.d3 Qh4+.

I'm not seeing any short forced win if white opens with e3, though there are several sequences red can try where white has to make exactly the right counter several moves in a row.

A computer could probably tell us by exhaustive computation whether red has a SHORT forced win, at least (say, within 10-20 moves).  Of course, that might be construed as 'ruining' the game.