Playing with wrong placement of the Queen

@pkill
Yeah, I'm familiar with 0-0 and 0-0-0 notations, but not with a king on d1 (;.

edit: and it's strange that in the analysis board "long" castles to the right side is possible from this starting position, but "short" castles to the left is not. Probably some consequence of this being an impossible position in standard chess - you can't swap the positions of King and Queen without moving a single pawn. But still, it's peculiar.

@Panagrellus said in #1:

A purely curiosity-driven question:

In OTB chess between beginners and occasional players, it's a common mistake to put one of the Queen / King pairs on the wrong squares - for example, the white King may be placed on d1 and the Queen on e1. [EDIT to clarify: you get an unsymmetrical position, with Kings on d1 and e8, and Queens on e1 and d8, respectively].

Obviously this is totally against the rules, but is there any theory for this "illegal" variant of chess? I think it's quite intriguing as short castles go to opposite sides of the board - maybe you get interesting, sharp games with this setup?

Or maybe this is just a silly Saturday-night-after-two-beers kind of thought...

This reminded me of my childhood. We did played with king and queen on the wrong colors. We just played till checkmate.

@ryan121

Exactly, I also often see this alternative starting position in games between kids/ beginners.

This alternative setup does make intuitive sense, if you think about it from the standpoint of organizing a royal court. In standard chess, the white Queen is to the left of her king, but the black queen is to the right of hers.
For some strange reason, the two kingdoms of standard chess have different traditions with respect to royal courtesy, as to the correct place for the Queen. Which is strange, as in every other aspect they have organized their state exactly the same way.

Article 7: Irregularities
7.1 a. If during a game it is found that the initial position of the pieces was incorrect, the
game shall be cancelled and a new game played.
b. If during a game it is found that the chessboard has been placed contrary to Article
2.1, the game continues but the position reached must be transferred to a correctly
placed chessboard

@Sarg0n

Yeah, that's the FIDE law of chess -- which many beginners and occasional players blissfully ignore. They just put pieces on the board and start playing, no matter what colour is on the bottom right, and where the Queens are.

Among all the rookie mistakes in setting up the board, the unsymmetrical (or rather, not mirror-symmetrical) positioning of Qs and Ks is arguably an interesting one. It should probably not give any of the players an extra advantage, but totally messes with opening theory. Unfortunately, by the time chess players start to write down their games, they know where the pieces have their place, so we can't look at such games it seems. (;

Just remember " white queen= white square and black queen = black square"

@Schach02

If you want to play standard chess according to FIDE rules, yes. My point was that "White queen black square , black queen also black square" is an interesting setup in its own right. Often played by accident by beginners, it could also be a serious alternative to Fisher random and other variants that go away from standard opening theory.

Actually, I now found out this has a name - it's a form of "displacement chess". Wikipedia says there was a correspondence match with the rotated K/Q setup in 1935, with participation of GM Paul Keres. But I couldn't find any of the games.

"...so we can't look at such games it seems."

I stand corrected. I found a game from that 1935 correspondence match, here's the beginning.
Move 9 will surprise you.

https://lichess.org/study/5m1BswZC/TWvQJUty

Import of the PGN stopped after move 14, because move 15 says "Kg1", which isn't possible, the King is already on g1 after Lichess's interpretation of "0-0" in this position. The reason appears to be that they performed castling differently, with the King moving only two steps to the right side, not three as in the study ( why the heck does the analysis board even allow this? )
Here's how it continued:

15. Kg1 Qc7 16. b3 Be8 17. Qf3 Bb5! 18. Nxb5 axb5 19.Re3 Rxd3 20.Rdxd3 b4 21. c4? bxc3 22. Rxc3 Rxb3! 23.g4 Rxc3 24. Rxc3 Qd6 25. Bf4 Ne4 26. Ng6 fxg6

@pkill @Sarg0n

Source: https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/displacement-chess-2