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Comment by __s | Hacker News Reader

> indicates a slight tendency for White to face harder opening decisions

supporting the quip "the hardest game is to win is a won game"

Not surprised at end re classical position not being the most even configuration. In that configuration bishops & knights practically start aimed at controlling center, so there's little awkward properties to dampen White's initiative. One of the rooks even get to castle out of the corner

Chess960 would be better if they just got rid of castling in it, tho wouldn't be surprised if that makes for certain positions getting even worse for Black

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26066844 for thought on game theory of strategy when playing perfect is computationally infeasible

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Chess960 would also be better if both sides were asymmetrical and there were novel positions for both players in every game.

I go to a chess event 2-3 times a month in the city where I live, and there are a few of us that are big into variants and play a lot of Bughouse, Crazyhouse, Racing Kings, etc. 960 is a bunch of fun but asymmetrical 960 is a blast, and asymmetrical Bughouse 960 / Crazyhouse 960 is the most fun and hard version of chess I've ever played. There is no theory, just pure tactics and reaction.

Probably many asymmetrical combinations are unfair to black. Maybe running through combinations and simulated games with a chess engine could identify ones that are fair, asymmetric and fun? Then a database could be built up of these combinations and it could be randomly selected to start your game.

Similar idea is randomized openings. Checkers does this already. TCEC does chess AI tournaments using sharp preselected openings (matchups playing 2 games, one of each color)

From my understanding that is exactly what this group are doing: https://chess960v2.com/en

Maybe there are asymmetrical combinations that actually give Black the advantage? Because Black's setup is nicely harmonious and White's is clumsy. Or maybe not I'm entirely unsure.

> Chess960 would also be better if both sides were asymmetrical and there were novel positions for both players in every game.

Yes! I never understood why people are so much into Fischer Random when there is also e.g. Benko's Pre Chess, where the players just place their pieces on the first and eight rank at the start of the game. Every player can decide to break the symmetry or not. They can even set up the normal chess position if they desire to do so. But for some reason today only Fischer Random is played, probably because Fischer was more famous than Benko. But Benko's version is more elegant, the players have full control and there are more start positions.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess960-chess-variants/pal...

Also interesting: Start with an empty board and let the players place their pieces and pawns however they want in their half of the board, as long as the piece does not attack an enemy piece.

I can't say for 960 specifically, but for standard chess getting rid of castling usually results in the players just manually castling their kings. I believe that is why the move was introduced in the first place. So it really doesn't accomplish much except make the opening a bit more limited, since they have to leave themselves a way to manually run the king over one of the rooks. Usually to the short side, since that's quicker. Basically makes queen side much less viable to leave the king at. And queen side castling was already the rarer of the two options. I imagine it would be a similar story for a lot of 960 positions. I'm not sure how getting rid of castling would benefit anything. In 960 you already get a lot of super crazy aggressive positions with exposed kings even with castling.

> I can't say for 960 specifically, but for standard chess getting rid of castling usually results in the players just manually castling their kings.

The entire design of 960 is backwards when it comes to castling, because it was deliberately designed to facilitate castling. This is the whole reason there are "only" 960 positions, as opposed to 2880 positions if our only restriction is that bishops are on the opposite color (and that both sides are symmetric). By reifying castling as something that must exist rather than a gross and unfortunate hack to paper over the flaws of the standard chess position, the ruleset puts the cart before horse.

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