So, this website introduces Chess 744 and addresses the confusing castling issues of Chess 960. Basically, we removed the Chess 960 setups with rook and king in a corner and then used the exact mechanic from standard chess. Rool moves to king (if not already adjacent) and then king swings behind the rook. Here is the site - along with a designated setup for each calendar day.
Chess960[0] aka Fischer Random aka "Freestyle Chess" (the last is a name chess.com has been using") is a fairly popular variant with 960 possible starting positions.
The way I'm interpreting this, 324 is different in that the rooks & kings are fixed, but the position is asymmetric.
Is it called 324 because there are 324 possible starting positions? Also, I'm inferring that this is popular in computer chess specifically, is there a reason for that?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960
edit: there's a quote from the inventor in the wiki that answers my first question and sort of answers the second:
> This version has huge advantages over chess960. First, no special castling rules, any engine or GUI or human can play with no instruction after seeing the initial position. Second, since all but 18 of the 324 positions are asymmetrical, opening play should be much more interesting and complex. Third, the normal positioning of the rooks and kings and normal castling makes the game feel closer to normal chess. Fourth, matches of up to 648 games can be played with no repeat positions, generally enough for most purposes. Most important, no matter how many cores or how much time the engines get, there should be plenty of decisive games for the foreseeable future since many positions are at least not too far from the win/draw line.
The idea of an asymmetric Chess starting position is very interesting, although it does introduce more risk of one side starting with a big advantage (perhaps this has been analyzed).
I also like that in this variant, castling works like normal -- that is one of the most unintuitive aspects of Chess960.
I don’t personally think reducing draws would improve the game at all
Does this "reduce draws" purely because it randomly gives one side a small (or big) advantage? If so, that doesn't seem to be an improvement at all.
It would be easy enough to test if one side having an advantage is common: have a chess engine play against itself many times using the same setup. The try a new setup. Find out what percentage of the time one side seems to have been given an advantage. (i.e. an advantage that's greater than the built-in one that white has.)
If there's a different reason this reduces draws, what is that reason? If it's simply reducing the reliance on book openings, that's fine, although there are other solutions for that. If there's something in a particular piece structure that reduces draws, what is it?
With an asymmetrical setup there has to be cases where one side has a real advantage over the other.
How big is hard to know. Maybe it doesn't matter much.
Chess engines can figure that out empirically.
PS I checked, and this has several mentions before April 1!
How does this compare 'draw reduction' wise with Chess480 (by John Kipling Lewis) or Chess18 https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/34852/chess480-why... https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1crd700/thoughts_on_...
I agree with the idea that rooks should be in their regular positions along with the king; This makes the castling rules much more intuitive than chess960. I think the asymmetric starting position is going to be pretty rough as this would lead to huge advantages. E.g. having 2 bishops next to each other is so much stronger than not.
How does this work? Do players secretly choose their starting positions, or are the starting positions randomly determined?
Fairly small change, just some changes to the initial piece placement.
“All Kings, Rooks, Pawns are in their original locations as chess but other pieces are placed randomly in their first and last ranks, with no symmetry requirement between two sides, with the only restriction for bishops of each side must be on different colored squares.”
Has anyone thought/experimented of a variant that works a bit like the starting phase of Risk: pawns are as they are classically, but players take turns in the beginning phase placing their other pieces in their respective bottom/upper file.
Chess and Go are very different in that one is for points and the other is for annihilation. However, Go solved the draw (and first player advantage) with 'komi'. Giving white (the second player) some extra points, I think it's usually around 6.5 points right now. The amount that komi should be is still up for debate and changing, though I think everyone agrees the half portion is good.
Though stronger players can no longer give 'presents', where you force a draw on a weaker opponent by ensuring both players end up with the same amount of points.
Is there amendment to chess that could work similarly? Nothing is coming to mind, but Chess is not my domain.