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First move advantage in Western Chess - why does it exist?[Subject Thread] [Add Response]

Joe Joyce wrote on Thu, Aug 9, 2012 10:36 PM UTC:

George, thanks for the reference. That's where I took my numbers from.
I'd run across it when I was searching for the answer, and that's the
best I did in that search. I was quite surprised to see nothing there,
other than it might be this or it might be that, and everybody likes tempo.
But given the specific rules of chess, with move order and general
structure built in, the thing that most gives white that 30% win-lose
advantage is mobility primarily, as far as I can tell. No one, anyhow, has
shot down the contrafactual argument. If you accept the premises, the
result seems to follow inexorably. 

Derek, you may be right with that chain of "if A, then B; if B, then C, if
C...", but like the Drake equation, it is expandable, and at each stop
along the way [a, b, c... etc] you lose some of what you're looking for. I
think you present too long a chain of events, giving too many opportunities
to go wrong. I like short, sharp and simple here. Occam's Razor. Mobility,
with or without board size and pawn reversibility, seemingly can be tested
by using pieces that are all short range. Check the stats of great
Shatranj, where all the pieces move only one or two squares [but all jump],
and run FIDE-type games with B2, R2, and Q2, and/or B3, R3, and Q3
repalcing the infinite sliders, and see what happens to the stats. Even HG
Muller's piece value estimation method, properly carried out, will give an
indication, because it does show white with a 53-47 ad.