A small difference in set-up?

I was thinking that chess would be way different if the King and Queen were on opposite files, has anyone ever played like this? I think that in this set-up (the Wking on e1 Wqueen on d1, Bking on d8 Bqueen on e8) there might be a forced win for white. What do you think?

I was also thinking that it would be fun if the bishops and knights had swapped places, it would make the game totally different.

Is there any particular reason that classic chess has the set-up that it does?

1. BEcasue everything else is symetric. Swapping the king and queen would make no difference. For instance a line of the kings bishop gambit would go from

1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Bc4 Qh4+
to
1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. Bf4 Qa4+

Edit: If you swapped the white king and queen but left the black king and queen alone (or vice versa) you would change the balance of the game from it's current state.

Originally posted by zebano

Edit: If you swapped the white king and queen but left the black king and queen alone (or vice versa) you would change the balance of the game from it's current state.

yah thats what I meant, thanks for clearing it up 🙂


I got the idea from a glass chess set where on the box they had it set-up in that way and I knew it was wrong but it still made me wonder

My guess is that we'd see a lot more games with closed centers - it would be dangerous to open the file your king is on.