David Bronstein had it right!

World Co Chess Champion David Bronstein proposed a chess variant known as placement chess or Bronstein Chess. The rules are simple yet allows for a game with over 8 million starting position!

1. The player spend the first 8 moves placing the pieces on the back rank. 

2. Castling only is allowed for a king on his "throne" e1 and e8 and with a rook that was placed in a corner.

3. Bishops are to be placed on opposite colors.

This simple recipe is superior to classical, random and Kramnik no castling rules...because it allows for all four games to exist within it! We can still choose to play symmetrical randorn, the classical formation etc.

I have played this game for many years and showed it to GM and IM friends, strong masters. They all agree this is an improvement over 960. Which is ironic because Fischer mostly likely got the idea from Bronstein...

http://www.quantumgambitz.com/blog/chess/cga/bronstein-chess-pre-chess-shuffle-chess

I also gave an interview recently on the chess underground podcast where we spent some time discussing this topic. 

https://new.uschess.org/podcast/chess-underground-8-fm-carl-boor/

Consider this. In placement chess, chess becomes a game of incomplete information at the starting phase. What effect will this have on the relationship of the computer and chess ?

It is a real pity it is not possible to play Bronstein Placment chess on any servers. Please encourage chess.com, ICC, lichess to do so!