Unsolved questions

This page gives some questions about Lasca that, as far as I know, are so far unsolved.

White's advantage

In most games playing first gives a significant advantage. Can you prove whether this is also true of Lasca, and how great is the advantage? In other words, what is a reasonable handicap for White in a tournament?

Fool's mate

What is the shortest possible Lasca game, assuming an inept opponent?

Since I originally posed this problem Willem van der Vegt, from Zwolle in the Netherlands, supplied a mate in 11 moves, but Bruce Wilford has found a shorter solution in 8 moves using a depth first search computer program he wrote:

	White Bruce	Black Dummy
1	C5-dD6	E7-C5
2	B6-D4	F6-E7
3	D4-F6	G7-E5
4	A5-B6	E5-D6
5	C7-E5-G7	E3-D2
6	G7-E5	F4-E3
7	C3-D4	G5-F4
8	B2-C3	-----

There are no shorter solutions than this, but there seem to be a number of solutions of this length.

Legal positions

Is it possible to tell whether a given layout of pieces could have arisen in an actual game?

Openings

There are three essentially different opening moves. Which one is White's best choice? What is Black's best reply?

If you have answers to any of these problems please email me at:

David Johnson-Davies.

Last updated: 23rd June 1999