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A comment on Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship. Parent comment

Re:Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Champi... by squigz on Monday February 16, 2026 @03:52AM (#47032580)
I wouldn't say it's "boring" (hence the downvotes, I imagine) - but this does seem like an interesting idea, to let the players choose their positions. Does such a style exist?
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Re:Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Champi... by nilslindemann on Monday February 16, 2026 @04:49AM (#47033024)
It is called Placement chess, you can play it on PyChess. [1]

As far as I know no tournament ever used this rule.

[1] https://www.pychess.org/variants/placement

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Re:Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Champi... by squigz on Monday February 16, 2026 @05:28AM (#47033346)
Apparently also called Bronstein Shuffle (which also sounds like a fun dance)

A key part seems to be alternating turns placing pieces. I wonder if this would result in top level gameplay converging on certain opening placements? If so, I wonder how not taking turns but deciding on placement privately beforehand might affect gameplay.

Anyway, maybe when the pros get sick of Chess960 they'll give this a shot :)

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Re:Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Champi... by SauntSolaire on Monday February 16, 2026 @02:27PM (#47039174)
It would be effectively be the opposite of Chess960 -- instead of reducing the impact of studying openings, it would add a whole genre of placement meta you'd need to study to be competitive.
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