What is chess960

O-O-O would find the king on c1 and the rook that was to the left of the king on d1. The following diagram shows O-O for white, and O-O-O for black which remain the same for any chess starting position :. The castling rules and the bishop rule form an important link to the history of chess. It is true that you may not always want to castle, but if you need to vacate the centre, switch wings, connect your rooks, etc, the option is there.

See here for more explanation about castling in Fischer Random Chess online chess game at Chess. Thanks for the feedback There was a problem submitting your feedback. Please try again later. John Kipling Lewis proposed a simplification that results in Chess — half the Chess positions are mirrors but different due to the complex castling rules, which Lewis avoids.

Others have suggested that kings and rooks should start in their usual places, and only the other pieces are placed randomly. To remedy the problem of biased positions in which one side has a clear advantage the suggestion is that Chess tournaments should have two games with swapped colours per encounter.

But this means you have to halve the time per game or halve the number of games per tournament. Also in the second game players have learned from the first one: the g-pawn is vulnerable and can be easily blundered, as my opponent just did.

I must be very careful about that. Or they learn from the clever ideas of the other player and can use them in the second game. But the main problem of Chess, in my opinion, is that you start with absolutely no prior information or practice. Preparation has, for more than a thousand years, been an integral part of chess — and greatly appreciated by its adherents.

Chess fans swooned over new openings ideas the masters have come up with in-home preparation, and the ideas and strategies that are born of this kind of research have improved our understanding of the game.

The main problem arose in the second half of the 20th century, and especially since the advent of computers and chess databases: openings preparation started to completely dominate chess. Chess eliminates this problem, but it does so at the cost of turning off an important aspect of human creativity. Must we do away with all preparation in order to compensate for the exaggerated degree to which it had grown?

Or is there a compromise? He came up with the following suggestion: we select ten interesting and exciting positions to be used in tournaments and allow players to prepare in advance.

Immediately before the start of each round, the audience in the hall or on the Internet selects one of these ten positions for all games. This provides spectator participation, which is never a bad thing. Players have some basic preparation for all ten positions — they do not have to start the game with a long think about "can I move the c-pawn?

At the time I was, as mentioned above, talking to Bobby Fischer about his plans for a comeback with a Fischer Random match, and I discussed the ten-position idea with him. He was quite interested in it and we spoke for maybe half an hour, discussing all kinds of details. What is Chess? Fischer Random Chess Explained. Updated: Aug 10, , AM. Articles For Beginners. Opening Theory. Amazing Games.