Limited Chess960

Recently Alexander Grischuk came out in favor of Chess960, but only using 200-300 positions, excluding the "absurd" positions. Ilya Levitov (FIDE Vice President) echoed this, saying Chess960 should be played excluding "absurd" or "disharmonious" positions.

But what does that mean? How would you limit the positions to exclude absurd and disharmonious positions?

• Kings must be on e? or on d or e? or on c-f?
• Rooks must be in the corners? or within one or two of the corners?
• Knights must be on different colors?
• All the pawns must be protected?
• Something else?

How would you do it?

It seems more important that the bishops be on different colors, instead of the knights, because knights change colors on every move anyway.  More accurately, the color of the square occupied by a given knight changes with every move.

It's a good question because "absurd" is subjective. Out of all the 960 start positions which one's are absurd and who will make that judgement? So far the fans of 960 have not yet found one "absurd" start position. 

I think what eventually will happen is that the GM's will decide on a limited set of Chess960 positions according to their judgement of good "taste". But realise that the "taste" even of a GM is still a function of their familiarity with the traditional position that they have studied all their lives, some for more than 40 years. That length of time in front of the same starting position tends to steer "tastes" towards the traditional starting position, it is just human nature for that to happen.

In the years to come, there may be a way of determining which of the SP's are the most challenging for GM's. It will take time to work this out because often the challenge in the Chess960 position emerges later in the game or sometimes extremely rapidly at the start of the game. However there is always a "challenge".

It's all down to subjective judgements in the end. My own view is just play all 960 positions and enjoy what each one has to offer. Remember that each position does not have to offer "everything" because there are 960 and we are not just playing one position over and over! Each start position simply describes a set of "themes" within which the player must try to understand in order to master the position and Chess960 itself.

Enjoy 960

Absurd is completely up to personal taste. Maybe the only good argument is for an undefended that can be attacked on move 1, because that decides the opening. But even in that case, does it even matter?

The "absurd" positions are actually what makes chess960 more fun than chess1. Some of these are really cool, eg bishops in the corners. That makes for some weird open play with an extremely toxic center.

Who decides what's absurd? The chess1 grandmasters? But in that case why not just play chess1 instead...