alt Hacker News> indicates a slight tendency for White to face harder opening decisions
supporting the quip "the hardest game is to win is a won game"
Not surprised at end re classical position not being the most even configuration. In that configuration bishops & knights practically start aimed at controlling center, so there's little awkward properties to dampen White's initiative. One of the rooks even get to castle out of the corner
Chess960 would be better if they just got rid of castling in it, tho wouldn't be surprised if that makes for certain positions getting even worse for Black
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26066844 for thought on game theory of strategy when playing perfect is computationally infeasible
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I can't say for 960 specifically, but for standard chess getting rid of castling usually results in the players just manually castling their kings. I believe that is why the move was introduced in the first place. So it really doesn't accomplish much except make the opening a bit more limited, since they have to leave themselves a way to manually run the king over one of the rooks. Usually to the short side, since that's quicker. Basically makes queen side much less viable to leave the king at. And queen side castling was already the rarer of the two options. I imagine it would be a similar story for a lot of 960 positions. I'm not sure how getting rid of castling would benefit anything. In 960 you already get a lot of super crazy aggressive positions with exposed kings even with castling.
Chess960 would also be better if both sides were asymmetrical and there were novel positions for both players in every game.
I go to a chess event 2-3 times a month in the city where I live, and there are a few of us that are big into variants and play a lot of Bughouse, Crazyhouse, Racing Kings, etc. 960 is a bunch of fun but asymmetrical 960 is a blast, and asymmetrical Bughouse 960 / Crazyhouse 960 is the most fun and hard version of chess I've ever played. There is no theory, just pure tactics and reaction.