Make Horde Chess more balanced

White is definitely overbalanced. I've played a few more games, and you can win pretty easily as white, but you only win as black where white makes significant blunders.

Note: I do not prefer taking away the stalemate draw. It would make almost no different to the balance, while removing a little of the "common sense result" that newer players would expect.

Cynosure, I don't agree that "White is definitely overbalanced."
Maybe largely the quality of my opponents, but my black games are now: 13 wins vs 6 losses.

So until people have a better sense of how to play (either side), I don't think we should change anything.

Thibault, can we pull stats for games where both players are over 1800, and neither player is more than, say, 150 points above the other?

I think white will be even more favored in those games, but I could be wrong.

Just finished a series with over an 1900 - black won 2.5 to 0.5 although half was a cheesey stalemate draw... :(

How about allowing the back rank pawns the option to move 2 squares? As it is now I feel it takes way too long to get the pawns advanced enough to get any sort of initiative if white doesn't hesitate with exchanges and sacrifices.

@15 - but you were also playing a 2+0 where mistakes are more likely to be made. That's technically bullet horde.

Yeah, but majority of my black wins during Whiz' (4 min) tourn.
I just don't think we need to fix anything until its (statistically) proven broken. To that end, I welcome any challengers with white who can repeatedly prove they can beat me because of some inherent imbalance :D

I'd give it a try as white!

I'll pull more stats later, when there are more games in the DB.