What if chess didn't always start the same way?

Chess is more than a thousand years old, and it's still one of the best games ever made. But if you've played for a while, you've probably felt it: the first ten or fifteen moves of a serious game can feel a little… scripted. Two strong players sit down and rattle off a sequence they've both memorized before either of them has to actually think. So it's fair to ask — is classic chess partly "solved"? And if the opening is so well-charted, what would happen if we changed the board itself?

First, a fact-check: is chess actually "calculated"?

The claim that "the first N moves are known well enough to calculate most outcomes" is partly true — but only for two specific parts of the game.

✅ The opening is heavily "booked"

Serious chess has an opening book: databases of millions of games that map out the strongest replies to the most common first moves. Top players study these lines 10, 15, sometimes 20+ moves deep. In that sense the opening really is pre-calculated — not by a formula, but by a century of collective analysis. This is the predictable part people feel.

✅ Small endgames are genuinely solved

At the other end, endgame tablebases have completely solved every position with 7 or fewer pieces on the board. For those positions, perfect play is a lookup — the computer knows the exact result and the fastest path to it.

❌ But the whole game is nowhere near solved

Here's where the "we can calculate most outcomes" idea breaks down. The number of legal chess positions is around 10⁴⁴, and the number of possible games is the famous Shannon number, roughly 10¹²⁰ — more than the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe. Every position has about 35 legal moves on average, so the tree of possibilities explodes far faster than any computer could ever enumerate.

For comparison: checkers was solved in 2007 (perfect play is a guaranteed draw). Chess has never been solved, and by any realistic measure it never will be. The middlegame — where most games are actually decided — is wide open.

Idea #1 — What if the board wasn't 8×8?

The 8×8 grid is a convention, not a law of nature. Widen it to 10×8 and the whole geometry shifts: rooks and queens command longer files, knights need an extra tempo to reach the action, and the flank you thought was safe is suddenly a highway. None of the memorized 8×8 lines transfer cleanly — you have to reason from scratch about space, tempo, and king safety.

Shrinking the board is just as interesting. A compact 6×6 board (a nod to the historic "Los Alamos" chess used in one of the earliest computer games) strips the game down: fewer squares mean sharper, faster tactics and a gentler on-ramp for younger players learning how the pieces work together.

Idea #2 — What if the pieces didn't start in the same place?

This is the bigger shake-up. If both players agree on a custom starting arrangement, there's no book to memorize — because nobody has ever catalogued that position. You're improvising from move one, using pure chess understanding instead of preparation. (Chess fans will recognize the spirit of Fischer Random / Chess960, which shuffles the back rank for exactly this reason; custom placement takes the idea further by letting you design the whole setup.)

Example 2 — full scatter. Take it to the extreme: let each side's pieces start anywhere in their own half. Here White's army is scattered at random across the bottom four rows and Black's across the top four. It's chaotic, wide open, and impossible to prepare for — pure improvisation from the very first move.

Idea #3 — What if you changed both at once?

The two ideas combine. Put a custom army on a custom-sized board and you get something that has never been played before — a fresh puzzle every single time. Below, both sides are scattered at random across a wide, short 10×6 board — white spread over the bottom three rows, black over the top three — so even the sense of "which flank is which" is up for grabs. This is where custom chess stops being a variant and becomes your own invention.

Does it make chess more unpredictable — and more fun?

In our experience, yes — and here's why it works, especially for learners and classrooms:

• Creativity beats memorization. When there's no book to lean on, the better thinker wins, not the better memorizer. That's a more honest test of chess understanding.
• It levels the field. A newer player who hasn't studied openings for years is suddenly on much fairer footing against a booked-up opponent.
• It's endlessly replayable. Different board sizes and setups mean you're rarely playing the "same" game twice — the novelty keeps it fresh.
• It teaches principles, not lines. Kids learn why a move is good (control the center, develop pieces, keep the king safe) because they can't fall back on a memorized sequence.

None of this replaces classic chess — the standard game is a masterpiece. But custom boards and placements are a fantastic way to keep the game surprising, to practice real chess thinking, and honestly, to have more fun.

Curious to keep exploring? Browse the openings explorer, review one of your games with the free game coach, or read our guide to the best openings for beginners.