I think it would be nice to win prizes. I keep that sort of thing in mind when I am thinking about readers. Actually, I never think about readers, but I do think an awful lot about prizes.
It depends on the story. I do not really care how long or short a chapter is as a reader since what matters is the substance of it. I can always set it aside and come back later when it's long, but I cannot pretend to read what isn't there when it's short. I think the beginning should be both a teaser and a bait to continue reading. If told in the past tense, a very brief and vague recount of the past as far as that character is concerned might be good. Perhaps directly addressing the reader, since it would explain the existance of the book in the first place (in-story, if told from the first-person, it could be interpreted as if the PoVs were in fact compiling a record and a narrator who was only somewhat involved in the greater plot decided to organize it as a "saga" or "record"). I know of no writers who have actually addressed the reader's own existence in one of their novels... I think it could make for a very interesting practice.
A first chapter that is two pages long used to be called, "The Prologue," but writers started calling it "Chapter 1" to trick people into believing that there isn't a prologue.
