How To Make Chess Exciting Again?

There's a big problem in classical chess: too many draws. If 1 person wants to play safe/solid, the game could easily end in a boring draw.

I noticed this problem long before the recent chess.com article by Kramnik, in which he proposes to remove castling for more creative and exciting games. I've also thought of my own chess variants to achieve this.

Here's a small list of ideas:
1. No castling chess
2. Chess960
3. Chess960 with no castling
4. Asymmetric chess960 where players take turns placing their back pieces. Bishops can be on same color, no castling.
5. Choose your starting position: Start with an empty chessboard. Each player takes turns placing a piece on a square from the first 2 ranks. Once all 32 pieces are placed, the game itself starts. The placing of the pieces can also be timed. Pawns on ranks 1 and 2 can move either 1 or 2 spaces. No castling. Example position:
lichess.org/editor/rknpnqbp/pppprpbp/8/8/8/8/PPPBPNNP/PBPQPRRK_w_-_-_0_1

I played 2 games of #5 in blitz IRL and it was amazing! Very funny and it really pushes you to think.

What other ways are there to make chess exciting again?

I propose 'dragon chess' were all the pieces are replaced by dragons which moves two squares or five squares down or left or right or up the square they were two moves ago and they fired all the pieces on the line they are.

I support using Chess 960 for classical chess. This eliminates the extensive opening preparation of professional players, forcing them to think hard from the start. It also leads to interesting positions where pieces are on squares that they would normally not be on in standard chess.

If draws are the problem than shogi rule would help out a lot - the side that would actively repeat the moves would lose the game instead of drawing it.

portal chess!!!!

there are 2 portals. if you move a piece on a portal it teleports to the other portal.
your piece can also go through the portal and out the other side to go even more forward!
pawns that teleport can promote
if a king teleports into check the king gets an extra turn
checks go through portals accordingly

the portals start at a random square and then keep moving to other random squares
if a portals starts or moves onto a piece it teleports the piece automatically
bishops can now go to a different color

#2
silly chess
if a draw happens, the players play another game where they have to try to lose.
if a draw happens again, players have a staring contest but with very distracting chess stuff to look at.
if they are still alive after 42 seconds the screen of the other player staring will start to move around
after 50 seconds an "ad" about chess will block the way
after 1 minute if they are still alive they will have to answer 10 CAPTCHAs as fast as possible, then answer 10 custom made questions, with a bomb that will make the person lose after 100 seconds (for the whole game):

1. click coordinate c8
2. win vs stockfish lv. 1 (very hard under the time pressure - but luckily you )
3. finish the 'queen' tutorial on Lichess
4. eat a pawn in horde
5. 1 + 1 (i was going to say 'etc.' here but i didn't)
6. Checkmate the king with 5 knights (every move gives you 1 more second on the bomb be careful about 50 move rule)
7. Set up the start position
8. Choose: [Pond] [Pon] [Pawd] [Pawn]
9. Wait 5 seconds
10. CAPTCHA again!

if they still tie somehow, then i guess the players truly deserve a draw

sure there's draws up in the super gm level but how much for people around my rating?
besides if classical chess is boring don't play it

play the grob

An idea: in the initial position, invert bishops and knights.

Chess is exciting. If you don’t think that way something is wrong with you - but not with chess.

#9

I have a solution Sargon would love!

Replace classical slower chess with bullet!

Get those TV ratings up.