Chess 2880

Has this been proposed yet?  If not, I get to claim authorship, I guess.      (If it's already "out there," that's ok, too.)  This is simply shuffle chess with a bishop of each color and expanded castling rules:

Castling with the rook on or closest to the "h" file results in 0-0 (traditional kingside castling).

Castling with the rook on or closest to the "a" file results in 0-0-0 (traditional queenside castling).

I propose expanding the queen's powers to that of a combined rook and bishop.

 No, he dropped the restriction on the king having to be between the rooks. That gives you three times as many set ups.

Me, I'm still pushing for Chess18480.

"Me, I'm still pushing for Chess18480."

That's the one where you can castle with the knights and the queen, right?

No, but that's an interesting idea. Chess18480 is Seirawan Random Chess.

Ahh.  I did a search and found a post you made on the subject.  (And here I was thinking you just pulled a number out of a hat.)

+1

 No.  Chess960 requires the king to be placed between the rooks.  Chess2880 does not.

(Regarding this post... I was just reviewing my stuff and noticed that one post already explaining this had disappeared.  So, I added this one to clarify.)

Actually there is a variant called king to bunker leap that sort of does this and more. Castling positions are in the b and g files instead of the c and g. and the King can optionally LEAP to these files without using the rook instead of castling.

The author claims this solves the problems of jumbled positions or something.

http://chess.computerwebservices.net/kingbunkerleap.php

Interesting.  But I do prefer chess2880 for 3 reasons, maybe more:

1. Chess2880 is my idea

2. The traditional game is a subset of chess2880, but not of bunkerleap because bunkerleap doesn't have a c file position for the castled king (I'm not sure why it doesn't), and because bunkerleap's leap doesn't need to involve a rook.

3. There are only(!) 1440 starting positions in bunkerleap chess because half of the positions are mirror images of the other half.  That doesn't hold true for chess2880 (and chess960) since castling on the left wing is different than castling on the right.

If a king is on a and rooks are on g and h files- Is that a legal position in 2880?

-- where would the king and rook be on

1. a side castling.

2. h side castling ...

And i take it you need to clear the backrank of the other pieces?

Yes, that would be legal.

1. a side castling would be with the R on the g file, and it would result in the K on c and the R on d.

2. h side castling would be with the R on the h file and result in the K on g and the R on f.

And the backrank would need to be cleared.

regarding point 2, dont you wonder why the king can't just end up in the b file for queen side castling in one step? Probably thats what the author had in mind in switching that  ..

And regarding mirrored possitions - thats sort of a strange nitpick -- so what if half are mirror images of the second half - there are still different to one degree. - In face there are no real mirrored positions unless you are looking at positions after castling .. even the default position - if you switch the king and queen -- yeah there are mirrored but they are still diff positions

Still -- the wierd offset caused by castling to the c file does  makes chess960 interesting. If you switch the king and queen the king only goes one square to the c file for a side castling.  IN King to Bunker leap king would end up in the b file with castling or a bunker leap.
What makes the bunker leap interesting is that you DONT have to clear the back rank -- only the destination square should be empty.

And it seems king to bunker leap could just as easily use the c and g files as chess960 rather than the b and g files.

Still I agree chess2880 does seem like another interesting variant.

This variant is supported here:
http://users.otenet.gr/~coolpalm/chess.htm

Click on promotion button until will be king (setup mode)
Then click (once or more) on board on an empty (or pawn) square to display a random setup, click on promotion button to exit setup mode, then you can play for both sides with correct castling rights. To castle move the king on rook (the king "takes" the rook).

related links:
http://users.otenet.gr/~coolpalm/chess_random_starting_position_uk.htm

http://users.otenet.gr/~coolpalm/chess_random_uk.htm