Chess 960. Love it? Or not really?

So what do you guys think of chess960?

Is it better than Standard Chess? As good? Or worse?

It must be said that a player should be informed prior to a match that Chess 960 will be in play. Otherwise one arrives at the board to find that for some reason the pieces are scrambled and left to wonder why.  

I tend to regard it as quite fun, but prefer normal chess. It's a good workout for the brain, and there seem to be good tactical opportunities.

I haven't played enough to form a real opinion yet I suppose. So far I am enjoying it though.

I understand the game was an invention of Bobby Fischer.

It tends to become kinda boring to play the same openings again and again and again ... while I realize that Fischerandom Chess already existed before Bobby Fischer (it's just a cheap copy of Shuffle Chess), it brings a fresh breeze into the game. One of my favorite variants, but it never will beat original Chess. 

I like it !     

So-mlacunza is the world's grand master of chess 960. I should send mlacunza a challenge. 

It's too bad that this site doesn't support Pocket Knight Chess. Now that's a game for tacticians...

Mario la Cunza got banned about a year ago (Jan 2012).

http://www.chess.com/echess/stats/mlacunza?type=chess960

The Current Top C960 is @ :

http://www.chess.com/echess/players?type=chess960

ok

Love 960 because all those chess books my opponent has read helps them nothing.  Its like a chess sandbox.

Yes. Chess960 was supposed to be the "Solution," to revitalize chess. When I first saw it proposed, I was very excited to try it.

Chess without all those centuries of opening theory? What else could be better? I never considered myself much of an Opening Wiz, anyway. I've always thought a chessplayer should understand why a particular move works, rather than just memorize line after line spoon-fed to him by some Grandmaster.

Plus I though 960 would time-warp me back to the days of Greco and Lopez. Challenging me to invent opening theory, the way they did.

But now that I've tried 960 for a while, I'm not so sure. Okay, i'm shakey in the opening part, that much I expected. But I never realized how uncomfortable I would be in the middlegame as well. The middlegames I reach are completely unfamiliar. There is no sense of "been there, done that." The positions are almost an alien landscape.

Only as the endgame approaches, do things start to look familiar again.

I still intend to keep trying 960. But so far, I am disappointed.

what't that?

Pocket chess is a variant where each side gets an extra knight, which they set off to the side, and may drop into the game at any time as their move, on any unoccupied square.

You want stress? Try avoiding forks from a knight that hasn't even appeared yet.

LOL

Sorry varelse, but I hate this idea. 

It makes out of Chess a mere game of luck. No matter how well you defend your king, unless that surprise knight has been dropped off already, you can never be absolutely sure if he and a rook/queen are getting forked the next turn. It kinda defies the whole point of bringing your king to safety in the opening.

Can you place the king in check when dropping the knight on the board?

Oh yes.

I only played it once, against a friend who showed it to me. I quickly sac's a minor, then (against his sage advice) entered my pocket knight early, and forced him to sac his queen for a minor, to avoid mate.

That left me, on the board, ahead a queen for a minor. But the game went on, and he still had that darned invisible knight, lurking on all 64 squares at once. It made progress almost impossible, despite my extra queen.

The game went on for about another 35 moves. It eventually entered the friendly take-back the move phase. We each won that game maybe 5 times apiece.

I think I saw that game varelse in that forum "those damned invisible Knights" great game but how did you get to promote to an emu is all i want to know?

I paid my dues to the National Emu Laborers Union. Everything else just kinda fell into place.