Chess960

An example of a Chess960 setup.

Chess960

Invented by: Bobby Fischer, 1996 – though similar, albeit less restrictive variants came before.

Difference to standard chess: The placement of the pieces on the first rank is randomized, following these three rules:

White and black pieces MUST mirror each other like in traditional chess.
The bishops MUST be placed on opposite-colour squares.
The king MUST be placed on a square between the rooks.

Castling

When castling in Chess960, the pieces end up in the same position as if they were castling in traditional chess. When castling which your king-side rook, the king and rook occupy the same spaces as in queen-side castling, and vice-versa. This means that when a king or rook is already at its destination during casting, they may not move, or sometimes simply switch places.

The following illustrations show a couple of examples of how castling works in Chess960:

Castling Queenside

Like standard queenside castling

Castling Kingside

Like standard kingside castling.

Castling Queenside

On queenside, the two pieces move over.

Castling Kingside

On kingside, the two pieces swap places.

Castling Queenside

On queenside, the king stays in one place.

Castling Kingside

On kingside, the rook stays in one place.

All the same rules of castling in regular chess still apply.

Some facts about Chess960:

Chess 960 was invented in 1996 by the former World Chess Champion, Bobby Fischer, hence the alternative name, “Fischer Random Chess."
Fischer had long believed that opening theory was limiting chess inventiveness since top players knew the opening moves by heart. In order to avoid making large rule changes and developing a new game entirely, he decided to eliminate the opening theory in order to preserve what he believed to be the essence of chess.
The name Chess960 refers to the 960 starting positions that can be used in the game. There are 960 different possibilities for the pieces to be in when the game starts due to the restrictive limitations of the chessboard setup.

“I love chess, and I didn’t invent Fischer random chess to destroy chess. I invented Fischer Random Chess to keep chess going”. – Bobby Fischer

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