Fischer-Random / Chess 960

Introduction to Fischer-Random

June 19, 1996 was the special day in which the late American former World Champion Robert James Fischer came up with this variant. He wanted to minimise the effect of opening preparation and instead wanted players to develop creativity and skill.

Fischer Random is when the back row pieces are shuffled randomly. However there are 3 constraints to this arranging, and it turns out that there are 960 different ways to arrange the pieces to form a different position, hence the name chess 960 (you can do the combinatorics yourself :)). These 3 constraints are:
- The two bishops must be placed on opposite colours
- The King must be placed within the two rooks so that castling is a possibility both ways
- White's and Black's pieces must mirror each other, just like in regular chess.

All other rules in this variant are the exact same as normal chess, except when castling.

Castling in Chess 960

When castling h-side, aka kingside the king and rook will end up on g1 and f1, just like in regular chess. The rules for castling will be the same, and that is that in the castling path no square may be controlled by the enemy pieces, and the king and rook have not moved prior, and that castling is only allowed once per game per player, and that the castling path is clear of all pieces.

Same goes for queenside castling, here it is a side but the king-rook positions are c1 and d1. The same rules apply.

Castling on Move 1!?

In some random positions a possibility is that the king is on f1 and the rook is on g1. On move 1 white can kingside castle, which is very rare in any game of chess.

Chess 960 Tournaments

The biggest one is the Fischer-Random World Championship. The latest winner is GM Hikaru Nakamura, who was able to defeat Nepo with white in armageddon tiebreaks. You should go check out that game if you haven't already.

There is also Saint Louis Chess Club's 9LX (960) event dedicated to Fischer Random, which Fabiano Caruana has won a few times over the past years.

Conclusion

This is a basic intro on what Chess960 is, and it gives you all the information you need to experiment with a game yourself. So go have fun with this variant and let me know how it goes in the comments!