As an organizer and director of small tournaments, I tried to include Chess960 sections, but never got the quota needed to play. (And the quota would have been 4. I never made it to 3.)
960 Over-The-Board
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Man that is depressing. I've been on chess for many many many years but 960 has stole my heart. For me there is no other way to play chess now. I've got a Facebook group going (Chess 960 OTB) & a newly made team group on here just to try & unite some players. It is a little slow but it is getting support. I know there has to be players out there for this but for some reason it's not quite anywhere near "blowing up" status. The average life span of a game is much longer than in traditional, the quality of games are always outstanding, & In OTB 90% of the players will play the whole game with you in one sitting. which can easily cross into 4 & 5 hours. cant put a price on that battle. It's just kind of strange that there are many people playing 960, yet finding opponents for OTB is very very slow & difficult. ...are people just not into playing on a real board anymore? Lol. I'm hoping over a little time we can all find eachother & create a nice 960 community.
I've never actually tried 960 (I know, shame on me) but I was wondering how you choose the initial starting position OTB. Obviously the computer chooses for you online. Is the simplest solution the DGT 960 clock?
There are clocks that can set them up, & there are alot of free starting position generators out there for virtually anything u can play on. Computers, smartphones, ...I'm on a iPhone & I use a free app called Morphy. The only thing it does is generate a random position or u can manually enter in the position. What I personally do to keep the random integrity intact is to have my opponents choose any number between 0 & 959. I then take a screen shot of that position to prove it is what they chose & not just something I'm making up. ...& that system has been working very well for me.
I prefer to start with only the pawns on the board and then start the clocks.
White then places a piece on the back rank and that is the first move of the game.
I also prefer allowing bishops on the same colour square in the initial setup.
Pocket-Kings; That's a nice system. Now when someone says, "you cheated", you can say, "no I didn't, my phone did".
baddogno wrote:
I've never actually tried 960 (I know, shame on me) but I was wondering how you choose the initial starting position OTB. Obviously the computer chooses for you online. Is the simplest solution the DGT 960 clock?
There's a simple procedure using a standard (six sided) die.
First, place the light squared bishop. There are four spaced it can go. Roll a die, reroll five or six. Count from the left and put the bishop on that square. Repeat for the dark bishop. There are now six legal squares. Roll and place the queen. Now there are five. Roll and place the first knight, then the second knight. There are 3 squares left. Put the king in the center and the rooks on the remaining two squares.
Lol thanks Ronald. I am also open to new ideas & better ways if anyone comes up with them :)
- meadmaker is correct I've read that the die is a popular way to get the position. I think it's really cool too.
- Dale, I've never tried that variant. ..that's not 960 though. & it is tough enough getting players for this much less that lol. Tackle one beast at a time I think lol. ....how do u like 960 though Dale? It would really help the whole 960 cause to have titled players on board.
Play Store has a free app called 960 generator which randomly shows all 960 positions shuffled
I wish there would be LIVE 960 on chess.com
I wish there would be LIVE 960 on chess.com
Hello All. Count me in for OTB 960. 960 is all I ever play.
Hi Ahmed, sborg, Kojack, meadmaker,
I'm sending u all friend request & group request. I have not yet found a way to put a clock on these correspondence notated games. But the average game time for me has been lasting a few hours. 4 & 5 hours have been my longest games. Occasionally a game gets paused if a player has to step away from the board for a bit. But haven't had a game last longer than 2 days. & 90% of them are getting finished in one sitting. If u all would be so kind to join my Facebook group, Chess 960 OTB has been the best place so far for everyone to meet up & at anytime someone just asks if anyone wants to play, someone else accepts, & the game gets going. I'm sure we could prob play these games here on chess.com, I just haven't figured out how to send my opponent the generated starting position pic that they randomly choose. So really just where ever works best for yall to play is fine with me. My main concern is just gathering us all up somewhere so an opponent is never far away when we wanna play.
Ok pretty sure I got everyone requests sent. If I missed something or something didnt go through please just search anywhere on here &/or Facebook
Chess 960 OTB
I'm going to get some sleep for a bit. Thank u guys for your support. It's gonna be fun!
Catch up with ya later.
You could send the starting position in an E-mail; i,e. Q/K/B/B/N/N/R/R I have a book, (that I haven't read yet), its; "Play Stronger Chess By Examining Chess 960". The author is, Gene Milener. Check out, CastleLong.com
@ cote, ok cool I'll keep an eye out for that. I definitely think 960 makes u a all around stronger chess player. Sending everything by email like u say could work too. What I'm really hoping to do is have enough players in a group to where if someone comes online & wants to play someone else will be online too at the same time & accept. To give it a very legit & authentic OTB feel. Sborg, it's not really a tournament, but a big enough group of players for the authentic OTB feel like I was mentioning to cote.
Scott im starting to feel as if 960 is stole my heart also...
Just looking to see if there are people interested in playing OTB 960.