chess variant: swap the locations of king and queen for black, and the likewise the sides for kingside and queenside castling. this makes the initial position symmetric by 180 degree rotation. (not an original idea.)
each king directly faces the opponent's queen on the other side of the board, so the opening is more treacherous: the king's pawn starts pinned.
both players castling kingside (the easier direction) results in opposite side castling, which hopefully results in more aggressive attacks (pawn storms) toward the opponent's king.
similar idea: modify queenside castling.
the goal is more decisive games, fewer draws, while not diverging too far from orthodox chess.
180-degree rotationally symmetric initial positions can also be tried in Chess960. consider the (white) starting position RNBKQBNR (king and queen positions switched). long castling (a-side for white, h-side for black) is easier (only need to evacuate knight and bishop); short castling is harder. but long castling (as usual) does not provide as much safety (leaves the king closer to the center of the board at c1 or f8) and immediately after castling leaves the rook pawn (a2 or h7) unprotected.
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