Queens & Bishops Gone Wild!

Anyone else play shuffle variants? I haven't since I first started playing in college but decided to take it up again for the sake of variety and to improve my positional & tactical abilites.

This variant is my favorite (and the only one I ever played), the king always starts in the middle, the rooks are normal and the bishops are always on opposite colors. Castling is normal. It's "Wild 1" one on FICS.The queen just happened to be in the middle also in this setup.

I played black in this one. Anyway, here's the starting position :



Here's the game.

1. d4 {looks like e4 but the kings are one over} d4
2. Ne3 {attacking the pawn} Nf6



3. Nf3 Ng6 {developing the knight & stopping white's Ne5 which could become annoying later}



4. c3 {letting his bishop out} Bd7
5. Bxg6 hxg6
6. h3 c5 {pawn sacrifice for central control, my kingside felt pretty safe and c3 felt too slow}



7. g4 exd4
8. Nxd4 e5
9. Nf3 Bc6 {protecting the d pawn in case of g5}
10. Qd2 Bc7
11. Nc4



11. ... Ne4! {and the queen must move and the knight on c4 is lost, note that Qd3 gets forked}



12. Qe3 dx4
13. 0-0-0



{and then, the final shot.}

13. ... Bb6 {winning at the least the knight}



White gives a rook check, I snuggle over to c7 and white resigns.

That was fun. My opponent was named monkeytrousers.

It's too bad it's not more popular and competitive. And the one that is (fischerandom, aka : chess960) I don't like because of the weird castling rule (I don't want to get used to that and have it mess up my regular game).

Feel free to comment on the game or shuffle chess in general.

Cheers,
Narz

11. Nc4

Click to expand...

That move deserves a question mark at least.

I agree. I played in a 2 1 (2 minutes total, 1 second increment) Chess960 tourney the other day. Needless to say, at that speed with a completely foreign starting position none of the games are worth showcasing.