Proposal Chess

TLDR

Proposal Chess is a chess variant designed to reduce the impact of opening preparation.

Before the game begins, each player secretly proposes a starting position for one board. On each board, the opposing player chooses which side they wish to play from that position. The game is then played on both boards simultaneously.

This “proposal-and-choice” mechanism prevents players from proposing blatantly favorable positions while still allowing them to steer games toward positions they understand well. Because each player proposes one board and chooses on the other, the format is fully symmetric.

Introduction

Proposal chess is a chess variant that aims to reduce the emphasis on opening preparation similar to Chess960. Unlike Chess960 which achieves this by starting with a position that is likely unfamiliar to both the players, proposal chess achieves this by having each player proposing a starting position for their proposing board. This does not eliminate the need for preparation completely but reduces it as there is only one position you need to prepare per game. Also, you can possibly forget your preparation once the game is over as it unlikely that you will reuse the same preparation (this is not applicable to online games or for lower-rated players). Naively, letting a player propose has the problem of the player proposing a position in which they will mate their opponent in one move. This is resolved by having one player propose the starting position and letting the other player decide who plays with what color. This resolves the issue in a manner similar to how the cake-cutting problem is solved.

Mathematical Inspiration (Skip if not interested)

Cake-Cutting Background

The cake-cutting problem is a game theory problem in which a resource like a cake or a chess position has to be fairly divided among two people (generally it is applicable to more than two people but we won’t worry about it here). The most common solution to this problem is one person cuts the cake into two pieces and the other person chooses who gets what piece. This solution is adopted to proposal chess as one player proposing a starting position and the other player deciding who gets what color. This achieves fairness in that if two rational chess gods who always play perfectly play against each other, neither of them are going to be forced to start with a bad position.

Achieving Complete Symmetry

If we only have one board there is still the practical advantage for the player proposing to come with home preparation. This issue is resolved by, having two boards in which each player is a proposer on exactly one of the boards. The players should also simultaneously propose their positions without looking at their opponent’s proposal even partially. This has the positive side-effect of achieving complete symmetry which is not the case with even regular chess. As in regular chess the player with the white pieces usually has a slight practical advantage (although the preference may differ for some players or based on context).

Basic Rules of Proposal Chess

Entities

  • The two players will be referred to as Player X and Player Y.

  • The two boards will be referred to as Board 1 and Board 2.

Glossary

  • Starting position: This constitutes the placement of pieces for both white and black sides on a standard chessboard, which side (white or black) should play the first move, what kind of castlings are allowed for both sides if any, what kind of en passant is allowed if any. Basically contains all the information in a FEN except for information regarding move count or information regarding fifty move (or hundred move) rule. There is also no need to specify any information regarding threefold repetition the starting position will be considered to be reached for the first time. For simplicity I will allow any valid FEN in which is not a checkmate position to be considered an acceptable starting position.

  • Proposing player: The player who proposes the position on a specific board, will be referred to as the ‘proposing player’ on that board.

  • Choosing player: The player who chooses the which side to play on a specific board, will be referred to as the ‘choosing player’ on that board. Therefore, on any single board we will have exactly one proposing player and exactly one choosing player.

  • Proposing board: The board on which a particular player is the proposing player, will be referred to as the ‘proposing board’.

  • Choosing board: The board on which a particular player is the choosing player, will be referred to as the ‘choosing board’. Therefore, on any single player will have exactly one proposing board and exactly one choosing board.

Phases of Play

Proposal Phase

  • At the start of this phase Player X will propose the starting position of Board 1, and Player Y will propose the starting position of Board 2. They will both do so without looking at the starting position proposed by their opponent even partially. Ideally they would come with their starting positions printed on a piece of paper and hand it to the arbiter.

  • Then both the players get to see the starting position proposed by their opponent. Then Player X will choose if he will play with white or black pieces on Board 2, and Player Y will choose if he will play with white or black pieces on Board 1. All of this should happen within a pre-specified duration, that will be referred to as the ‘choosing time’. They will choose without revealing their choice to the opponent. This can be performed by placing a coin under a opaque cup, with heads corresponding to white and tails corresponding to black. If a player fails to choose his color within the choosing time they are considered lost on that board but not considered lost on the entire game and they are allowed to play the other board.

Playing Phase

  • At start of the playing phase, the choices made by the players will be revealed to each other.

  • Then immediately they play against each other from the proposed starting positions with their chosen sides under some pre-specified time control that will be referred to as ‘playing time control’. This time control can have Fischer increment or Bronstein delay like in standard chess. There will be two chess clocks set to the playing time control, one per board. Having two chess clocks has the positive side-effect of making time scrambles more interesting, at least for the audience.

  • The playing rules are largely same as that of standard chess with exception of starting position, any ambiguities regarding who should move first or castling or en passant is resolved by referring to the specification of the starting position.

  • The 50/100-move rule counter is assumed to be zero in the starting position. Also, we do not assume any repetitions have taken place for the threefold repetition rule to kick in.

Scoring and Winner Determination

  • A simple scoring system of winning on a board gives 1 point, drawing on a board gets 0.5 points, and losing gets 0 points.

  • The total score for a player is the sum of the scores on both boards.

  • The player with the higher score wins.

Analysis of Strategies

Proposing a One-Sided Position

Proposing a position in which one side is clearly winning is a poor strategy as your opponent will simply choose the winning side.

Proposing an Equal Position

Proposing an objectively equal position is the best strategy mathematically speaking. However, it must be an interesting position for the proposing player to get an advantage out of the proposal. This will be strategy that will be adopted by chess gods who play perfect chess. One could also propose a position that plays to your strengths or plays against your opponent’s weaknesses. Like, proposing a complex tactical position against a positional player.

Gambling with the Proposal

The proposer can gamble by proposing a position that is winning for one-side but that is hard for humans to understand. This is a viable strategy in practice but comes with a lot of risks.

Additional Rules and Variations

The following rules could be adopted in context of tournaments or matches:

  • Armageddon could be played with both players bidding their playing time control until their proposed times are distinct, with the player who bid the lower time having draw odds. Both the players will have to play with the time control they bid on both the boards.

  • Win (or respectively draw) on the choosing board rewards a higher score than a win (or respectively draw) on the proposing board.

The following variations of rules could also be adopted:

  • One could disallow players from proposing certain positions. Like positions with weird pawn structures, or unusual positions with weird combination of pieces like five minor pieces versus three rooks positions. This would ideally be decided by a software that the players had access to while they were preparing what position to propose. I leave the specific details of what kinds of positions to be allowed or disallowed to someone more qualified than me.

  • One could potentially have a playing time control that gives the proposing player less time than the choosing player, or vice versa.

  • One could also play the two boards one after another instead of playing them simultaneously. However, this makes time scrambles less interesting.

Join the Conversation

If any of you are familiar with a similar chess variant (or some other game), please let me know. Provide your feedback on the rules, in what ways can the design of this game be improved, and any problems with the rules if you spot any.

How do you think this will affect the kinds of games that will be played? Will this make it necessary for players to become more universal, as players won’t be able to avoid positions that don’t suit their taste?

This style of proposal-based rules could be adopted for other games like Go, Shogi, Xiangqi, Backgammon, etc. My hunch is that this should work for any two player (or two teams) perfect information games that can be played simultaneously (one could play one game after another to relax the requirement of simultaneity).

Thank you, for reading! Having fun playing this game and let me know about your experience.