People have complained about the advantage memorising variations in opening theory gives in chess, while adding little value to the gameplay, such moves are not found by yourself, but already worked out by others. This, naturally leads to chess variations where opening theory is not fixed, scoring another defeat for rote learning.
The rules are more or less the same as chess -- pieces move the same way (castling is a bit different), and the starting position is different: pieces are randomly arranged along the home rank for white subject to 2 rules, and the position is mirrored. The two rules are:
1) Bishops are of opposite colours.
2) The king is in between both rooks (to allow for castling both sides)
Castling brings the kings and rooks to the normal final positions (as in standard International Chess) without regard to where they started from. This can result in long-range king flights (0-0-0-0-0-0!, except its still 0-0 for "king-side" castling and 0-0-0 for "queen-side" castling), and is subjected to the normal castling rules, ie.
1) King must not have moved.
2) Rook must not have moved, even if it had not been a rook then.
3) King cannot castle into, out of, or through check.
And thus I bring an interesting game which I will eventually fill the analysis for.
[Event "Let's Play!"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2014.01.21"]
[White "Cookiejar"]
[Black "meeeep"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "1400"]
[BlackElo "1465"]
[TimeControl "1 in 3 days"]
[Termination "meeeep won by resignation"]
[Variant "Chess 960"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "nrqkbbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/NRQKBBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]
1.d4 Nb6 2.e4 d5 3.e5 f6 4.Nf3 Bh5 5.Qe3 Qd7 6.h3 Nc4 7.Bxc4 dxc4 8.O-O-O O-O-O 9.g4 Bf7 10.Bc3 Qc6
11.Rhe1 Bd5 12.Nd2 e6 13.b3 b5 14.f4 b4 15.bxc4 bxc3 16.Qxc3 Kd7 17.Qa5 Bg2 18.Ndb3 Ke8 19.exf6 Nxf6 20.d5 Bxd5
21.cxd5 Nxd5 22.Nd4 Qc3 23.Qa4+ Kf7 24.Nab3 Nb6 25.Qa5 Bb4 26.Qa6 Rxd4 0-1
All images shall be resized, cropped screenshots of the chess.com board.
Ok let's do this move by move.
0.
This isn't actually very abnormal. The rooks are slightly displaced, the king went over to visit the queen, and accidentally pushed her one square away. The bishop hurriedly circumvented the regal duo. We shall call the side closer to the h-file the king side, and the other side the queen side. What happens here is that the queenside is already under the influence of the bishop pair once the pawns are out of the way. King might be safer on the kingside.
But at least there's no Ba1/Bh1, where b3/g3 opens up the diagonal for the bishop to stare straight through the kingside instantly.
There is Na1 though, which could prove to be a problem to activate.
1.d4 Nb6
d4 opens diagonals for bishop and queen, fights for the center. Nb6 solves the problem of the knight on the corner, develops it and exerts a little control over the center. Nothing much here.
2. e4 d5
And he has gained Space.
