"In chess, so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century didn't know nearly as much as, say, I do and other players know about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they might not do too well, because they'd get bad openings. You cannot compare the playing strength, you can only talk about natural ability, because now there is so much more opening theory, so much more memorization. Memorization is enormously powerful. Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get the opening advantage against Capablanca, or especially against the players of the previous century, like Morphy and Steinitz, easily. Maybe they'd still be able to outplay the young kid of today, but maybe not. Because nowadays when you get the opening advantage, not only do you get the opening advantage, but you know how to play the opening advantage – they have so many examples of what to do from this position. So it's really deadly, it is very deadly... that's why I don't like chess anymore... It's all just memorization and prearrangement, it's a terrible game now. A very un-creative game now.", Bobby Fischer, ex-world chess champion

Hi all,
I must say, that I personally fully agree with Fischer in his opinion. Especially openings like sicilian are precomputed about 18 or 20 moves in depth, in special cases it can be even deeper, around 30 or so.
And not only that, after all such lines of precomputation, which master of chess are memorized to, a theory about style of play following concrete line is set.
That's very heavy hit for creativity and intelect, you are not performing something you create with your brain and skills, but rather repeating something that someone, human or computer, played some time ago.
When we take this, winner of a chess match isn't smarter player, but better memorizedone. That is imo fact directly beating imagination of chess like a intelectual game.
Even here on playroom are professional chessplayers who know much from theory and plays for rating and players who are playing one time per month for example because they want to try their creativity and compare it with others.

I suggest to implement Chess 960
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960>
In summary, it is a variant of traditional chess, in which 1th and 8th lines are shuffled randomly in each game (by one system, so they are still mirrors of each other). Chessboard, figures, rules, all is the same like in traditional chess, just starting position is always different.
That puts out all theory, there are 960 possible starting positions, so it is impossible to remember any standards. All you can rely on is your creativity, tactics and strategy you are able to think out.
Because you doesn't have memorized lines, you are forced to think about game full time what again supports creativity and good ideas. Oh, how many times have I played a move mechanically without thinking in opening because I was used to it? How many times have I lost because of it? I don't remember... luckyly.
In chess 960 this would never happen, because you are always building strategy from scratch, what is impossible without thinking.

In summary, more creativity, more beauty, true intelectual satisfaction, and higher equality, that all chess 960 offers.
It shouldn't be that hard to implement, I guess there is already a framework for chessboard handling, so all to do would be enter a different starting position into it + make proper generator and edit castles slightly.
Please, think about it.

Thanks for reading.

Best regards

I

uhm...

This is very nice and fun suggestion, when starting a chess game it just should ask you if you want a normal chess or chess 960.