Implement this new chess variant please : opposite-castle chess

Hi,

I created a chess variant that I know people would love. It's called opposite-castle chess. Here are the rules:

You place the black king in front of the white queen and the white king in front of the black queen.
The starting position is assymetrical.
White king short castle on the right. Black king short castle on the left.
Long castle is prohibited. Every game becomes an opposite castle affair.

And that's it. This is a very romantic variant full of attacks and sacrifice. At the same time it's almost the same as regular chess. Only the starting position and the castling right change.
I am sure people would love it. Very simple to understand and elegant.

Interesting idea! I put the position into the analysis board to see what Stockfish had to say about it, and it seems that White has twice the initial advantage that they usually have with the conventional setup (+0.4 instead of +0.2); they can both develop and attack faster. The numbers are of course skewed by the fact that SF believes that Black has lost the right to castle, which would not be the case.
Nonetheless, we ́re humans, and I can imagine that this would be entertaining OTB as a bit of light entertainment.

I'm not sure I understand the premise of this. Can you please link the starting position?

@InkyDarkBird said in #3:

I'm not sure I understand the premise of this. Can you please link the starting position?

@finnsteur - what ́s the point of prohibiting long castling? Seems to me to be an unnecessary bind on the play of both sides.

@Wasted_Youth said in #5:

what ́s the point of prohibiting long castling?
He explained it. He wants to have all games with opposite castling.

@sheckley666 said in #6:

He explained it. He wants to have all games with opposite castling.
Which could also mean that both sides decide to castle long, i.e. also opposite. Not an answer.

Yes an answer. He doesn't want the players to decide where to castle, because then they could decide for the same side.

@Wasted_Youth
If you take both castle right the position becomes 0.2 again. I think taking the castle right of black is what gives you your advantage.
I tested a lot of position thanks to the board editor (you play some move until both sides have castled and give it to stockfish) usually it leads to balanced position of multiple sort.

The point of prohibiting long castle is just to avoid same side castle position. The starting position is asymetrical and I want it to stay that way.

If I didn't change the position of the king and just made black be forced to castle queenside it lead to the same problem as you encountered: big advantage for white. That's because it takes longer to castle queenside.

I also tried no change of position of the king and saying "white is forced to castle queenside - black is forced to castle kingside" stockfish gives 0.00 and a forcing line into a drawish endgame very weird.

In fact what I want in this variant is 2 thing :

• opposite castle position
• asymetrical position of the king

The first thing assure romantic chess. The second thing avoid long drawish variant. I don't know why but asymetry automatically lead to less exchange and more close/semi closed position.

@Wasted_Youth said in #2:

The numbers are of course skewed by the fact that SF believes that Black has lost the right to castle

No it doesn't, at least not if you inputted the position correctly. If Black doesn't have castling rights, the position is (unsurprisingly) even better for White (+0.9 without castling rights vs. +0.5 with castling rights). See the following positions with and without castling rights for Black:
https://lichess.org/analysis/rnbkqbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR_w_KQkq_-0_1
https://lichess.org/analysis/rnbkqbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR_w_KQ-_0_1

Of course, it's still not exactly right, because castling works differently than OP described.