A few variant suggestions have been made here and there, such as pre-chess or primordial chess lately.
Those are a bit extreme, so I'd like so suggest a simpler one that would fulfill the purpose of chess960 while getting rid of the "unharmony" and randomness issues.
So we start from the standard position, and players can optionally swap two pieces instead of making a normal first move. They can do it only once so that we avoid total mess in the opening, while still getting out of the standard theory.
Those are a bit extreme, so I'd like so suggest a simpler one that would fulfill the purpose of chess960 while getting rid of the "unharmony" and randomness issues.
So we start from the standard position, and players can optionally swap two pieces instead of making a normal first move. They can do it only once so that we avoid total mess in the opening, while still getting out of the standard theory.