Comment by squigz
11 days ago
I wouldn't say it's "boring" (hence the downvotes, I imagine) - but this does seem like an interesting idea, to let the players choose their positions. Does such a style exist?
11 days ago
I wouldn't say it's "boring" (hence the downvotes, I imagine) - but this does seem like an interesting idea, to let the players choose their positions. Does such a style exist?
It is called Placement chess, you can play it on PyChess. [1]
As far as I know no tournament ever used this rule.
[1] https://www.pychess.org/variants/placement
Apparently also called Bronstein Shuffle (which also sounds like a fun dance)
A key part seems to be alternating turns placing pieces. I wonder if this would result in top level gameplay converging on certain opening placements? If so, I wonder how not taking turns but deciding on placement privately beforehand might affect gameplay.
Anyway, maybe when the pros get sick of Chess960 they'll give this a shot :)
It would be effectively be the opposite of Chess960 -- instead of reducing the impact of studying openings, it would add a whole genre of placement meta you'd need to study to be competitive.