Imagine starting out with an empty chess board.
Each turn, the player can either:
- place a piece anywhere on their half of the board.
- legally move one of their pieces already on the board.
The kings must be placed first.
Each player gets the full array of 16 chess pieces to place, but once a piece is taken, it is permanently out of the game.
All the standard rules apply, except no castling allowed. It is recommended to also make sure there is only one bishop for each colour square.
Also, you cannot place a new piece down on an already occupied square.
This is kind of Chess960 taken to the extreme where the randomness of placing pieces is in the hands of the players themselves, also provides incomparably greater variability compared to Chess960.
Certainly it is impossible to develop move by move opening theory for this game... ( also difficult for engines because random piece placement introduces ridiculous amount of complexity ).
Interesting idea.
Interesting idea, sort of modified bughouse with two players.
- Can a piece be put to block a check?
- Can a piece be put to give a check?
Yes to both questions :)
Actually I have an opening theory for the king of the hill variant of put down chess.
I think white has a fairly large advantage playing the move 1. put Ke4 or 1. put Kd4.
And definitively not falling for the beginners trap 1.Ke3?? .... Ke5!!
"also difficult for engines because random piece placement introduces ridiculous amount of complexity"
Where was the random placement of anything mentioned?
This is better known as Unachess and has been suggested before.
Not currently doable (due to technical limitations) but has been noted as a popular variant and will be evaluated for the future. But I wouldn't hold your breath.
By random I mean from the engine's point of view. If you can put five pieces ( because the king goes in the first move, it does not count any longer ) on 32 squares, this added to legal moves of pieces already on the board makes up for almost 200 legal moves instead of the 35 average number of moves in a normal chess position. The engine is simply lost in this plethora of choices and the game seems very much random from its point of view.