IANACP, but I learned the rules recently. I can’t believe that in my 32 years, I never managed to play or learn the rules. What a fun and strategic game!
Anyway, here are my questions:
The queen is left of the king for one player and the queen is to the right of the king for the other, so that both queens and both kings are in the same column. Would the game be different if the formation was the same for both sides?
Does castling add an important wrinkle to the game, or is it just an arbitrary rule?
The game certainly would be different. How, I couldn’t say but the rules are the rules and the Queen always starts on her own color.
Castling is extremely important. It is a defensive move in general but it also has the benefit of getting one of your Rooks (or Castle) into play sooner than it otherwise might. There are ‘better’ and ‘worse’ times to castle and one of my favorite tactics (usually against inexperienced players as experienced ones will see it coming) is to ruin the other guy’s ability to castle. You can do that by forcing the opposing King to move as once it has moved just once the ability for him to castle is gone (and remember you cannot castle OUT of check nor can you castle THROUGH check).
Try an experiment. Play the game with the kings facing the queens and then play again without having the option to castle. My younger brother and I did that shortly after we learned the rules many years ago and to us, at least, the game was decidedly different.
And when you set up the board, make sure that the lower right corner square is white (or the lighter of the two colors). This really doesn’t make a difference, but when I go to a coffee shop to play chess and find a board with the pieces set up wrong (lower right corner is dark), it really flusters me. The usual setups do not appear right, and I turn the board the proper way.
One thing that sort of addresses both of your questions is one of my favorite tactics - opening up the queen’s file (column) and capturing my opponent’s queen with mine (Q × Q). She must then capture my queen with her king (K × Q). There is no net gain or loss in pieces, since we just traded queens. However, her king is now exposed in the front, and she can’t castle.
Clearly, this move would not work if the board were arranged as you describe.
I simply adore playing chess, though I haven’t played in years for lack of opponents.
Castling is very important and will often fluster a beginner to no end - it did me anyway, until learning more about the game and watching more advanced players.
Forcing one of the Rooks to move just once ruins the ability to castle to that side. Basically, the pieces you use in a castling move must not have moved at all prior to the castle.
Also, if it wasn’t clear before, note how castling brings the rook into play sooner. Ordinarily the rook is difficult to free up till the end game but castling gets them out sooner. That said that may not necessarily be a good thing. The rook is a powerful piece but it is handicapped in the beginning and much of the middle game (the way it moves makes it difficult to navigate a crowded board). So, while you might use it for offense it also becomes a target to be harassed and could be a liability. As a result castling any old time is not necessarily the best move available to you but generally you should try and manage to do it in every game.
The introduction of castling ni the mid-1500’s is considered one of the most important changes to the game, giving it’s modern flavor. One other major change that came before castling was introduced was increasing the playing scope of the Queen. At one time the Queen moved just like the King - one square at a time. When it was changed to the modern move for the queen it was found that it made the King to vulnerable, so castling was intorduced.
Another fun move to pull on someone who is not fully familiar with the rules is en passant.
I agree en passant is a fun one but honestly I’ve had almost zero use for it over the years. It’s rare enough to even get the opportunity and when I do it is rarely my best choice for my next move. As a result I’ve only done one en passant capture in the years I’ve been playing chess and only then because I just wanted to do it once.
Still, newbies playing chess think I’m making up the rules as I’m going along if I point out to them that they just left their pawn open to cpature in a way they didn’t expect.
So your opponent must move his K in capturing the Q. This is usually no disadvantage with Q’s off the board. There is one variation of the Pirc where White allows the trade of his Q’s by recapturing with his K which is theoretically suppose to give him the better end game.
Any change in the board setup will fundementally change the way game is played.
Take the scenario in the OP. If you reverse one king and queen you destroy every king and queen opening. Most of them depend on the Q-Q opposition because you always have equality in the number of attackers vs. defenders on the middle squares. A queen won’t take a free pawn because there’s another queen sitting back defending.
Likewise, try reversing the location of the knight and bishop. Now your bishop doesn’t have the long diagonal to work with. Your first move cannot be N-e3 or N-d3 because that blocks your middle pawns and you want those out front and center.
These changes, as far as I can tell, won’t destroy the complexity of the game. Still, new strategies must be devised. Your pieces are like a well oiled machine. Individual pistons firing to rev the whole engine. They all must work in unison and altering their starting location changes their entire relationship.
My favourite sneak move is to exclaim “look at the blimp!” and when the opponent turns his head to look, quickly abstract the opposing queen from the board.
Fischer proposed several variants of chess. One was where the pieces are put at random on the board on the back rank. The second was where the pieces were placed on the backrank one at a time anywhere you wanted. The problem he was trying to overcome (which has got worse since then) is that much of the game is decided by who remembers 10-20 moves of opening theory, and not by who is the better chess player