Imagine there’s no castling, and no reams of opening theory. Would that change how you play chess – and could it prevent a boring drawfest in top-class Grandmaster games?

That’s the theory being promoted by former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik and tested by Google DeepMind’s AlphaZero in scores of self-play games. Instead of picking up your king, and then your rook, and niftily playing hopscotch with them, there’s a new game in town.

All the other rules of normal chess apply, but there’s no more playing it safe: Now the king will be engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the middle of the board, and full-scale battle will take place not after 25 moves of Ruy Lopez theory, but right from move one.