A chess variation my brother came up with, we ve played it a few times and I've found it to be very interesting and tactical.

 

 

You start out with a normal set up and board, but you place a blinder at the halfway mark in the chessboard, so the players cannot see each other's pieces.  Then each player makes as many legal moves as they like (while keeping all their pieces on their side of the board) until they have a set up they like, the blinder is lifted, and white goes first!

 

 

we would get amazingly beautiful positions, that would explode in a few moves into a tactical maelstrom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i would love to see this feature on chess.com, i am sure it would be construcktable. 

 

 

 

the fun part is you cannot see your opponents set up until the match has begun, so you never know if you re castling into a storm!

 

 

 

also i m wondering, do you think this gives white more of an advantage for the first move? or less because black has unlimited time to mobilize their forces?

 

 

it looks to me like more, the attacks white and construckt are fierce looking, but either way they are masterful games and i ve really enjoyed them.  

 

 

what do you think?  has anyone else ever played this way before? 

It reminds of the board game stratego.

Maybe you'll beat me with this 'new' chess...

This idea is intriguing.  Perhaps each side should be restricted to making the same number of moves during the initial "blind setup phase".  If there is no restriction on the relative number of moves made by each side, then it is too easy for one side to be considerably behind in development from the get go.

That would be interesting.  :)  Actually it is very similiar to a variation called screen chess where you get to set up your pieces in any way secretly (with some restrictions) and then when both sides are ready to play then the position is revealed to each other and white moves first.  :)  It is an interesting game.  :)  I also like dark chess and grasshopper chess.  :)