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In September 2005 John Kipling Lewis published an article titled Castling in Chess960: An appeal for simplicity in which he suggests changing the castling mechanism used in Chess960:
“In examining Bobby Fischer's rules for Chess960's castling we see that it totally ignores the origins of castling in favor of appealing to chess players who are already familiar with the castling positions that result from Standard Chess. Unfortunately the system is confusing to newer players who aren't as familiar with Standard Chess. The final resting squares of the King and Rook feel arbitrary to new player who may not have played enough Standard Chess to intuitively remember them.
It seems that simplification of the castling rules for Chess960 could help promote the game for beginners, streamline the rules and reconnect the game with it's historical roots. To that end I suggest the following castling rules for Chess960:
Castling: This is a move of the King and either Rook of the same colour on the same rank, counting as a single move of the King and executed as follows: the King is transferred from its original square two squares towards (or over) the Rook, then that Rook is transferred to the square the King has just crossed (if it is not already there). If the King and Rook are adjacent in a corner and the King can not move two spaces over the Rook, then the King and Rook exchange squares.”
So the proposed idea is that instead of simply castling to the normal chess squares at all times, we move the king two squares to the left, or to the right, from wherever it started. In roughly 66% of all games played with these rules (whenever the king is starts on the b, c, f or g files), the player would have the unsavoury castling options of staying on their starting wing, or castling into the centre of the board (the d or e files)!
The purpose of castling is to vacate the king from the often volatile and dangerous centre to a (hopefully) safe haven, and to enable communication between the rooks. Shuffling the back row does not change the fact that the centre of the board is important in chess, and since it is often controlled by direct occupation, is subject to being opened (in which case you generally don't want to put the king there).
As a by-product, the Chess480 castling rules limit the number of opposite side castling games, where the players pawns are freed to be used as levers to open the opponent's king position. The proposed castling action in Chess480 is often useless from a game play perspective. Contrary to Lewis' statements, it is Chess480 that ignores the origins and history of castling. That is, the Chess480 castling rules ignore the actual purpose of castling, in order to maintain a superficial similarity. (The Art of Attack In Chess by Vladimir Vukovic provides an excellent overview on the history and evolution of castling, and the nature of the castled position itself).
"Half Are Mirror Positions"
By changing the castling rules as in Chess480, half the 960 positions become mirror images of each other, so are discarded and 480 positions remain. I'm not sure if Lewis assumed the same was true of Chess960, but it is not. Let's take a Chess960 mirror of the classical start position and do a quick examination. The Ruy Lopez: Berlin Defence is a good example.
We have our mirrored start (white's dark squared bishop is now the 'Ruy Lopez Bishop'), and proceed to play along the lines of the Berlin.
White has just played 4.O-O-O, and traditionally Black could respond with 4...Nxd4 to go into the Open Berlin. But the position is different. White has played O-O-O, not O-O as in the normal Ruy Lopez. An important difference as a rook now defends the kings pawn. Also notice that this rook is already on the same file as the Black king. It is precisely the Chess960 castling rules that make the positions unique.
This is the position after O-O-O with Chess480 castling rules. It is truly mirrored, and Black may enter the Open Berlin lines with 4...Nxd4.
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