Chess 960 discussion, hints, tips, questions et al

Welcome to this forum on chess 960 for Team Sheffield. We have joined the WCL960 league which will begin around the start of May so Ian (@superdrewe53) suggested a forum for those with less experience of it to dicuss and ask questions etc - a cracking idea.

So starting at the beginning, chess 960 (sometimes named Fischer Random after Bobby's endorsement of it as the future of chess) is so called because there are 960 possible starting positions. The pawns are the same, but all the other pieces are shuffled randomly on the back rank (the same for white and black). There are a couple of rules on piece placement, Kings must be between the 2 rooks and bishops must be on opposite colours.

The point of this of course is to remove opening theory and to play fresh positions. The rules are the same, just use your pawns and pieces better than your opponent! To those new to it, I hope you enjoy and please feel free to post any questions you might have here. 

In the few games that I have played, I have noticed that usually but not always that the pawn around the King is weak, my question is this is it a good idea to begin an onslaught on that piece

In my experience the starting position can lead to getting a bit carried away. Sometimes there are undefended pawns which you can threaten immediately eg. 1.c4 and your Qb1 hits an undefended pawn on h7. But does it really? If you take on h7 black may have Nf6 and you are falling behind in development. Probably not a good trade off. I think it's best to treat it like normal chess - you can't just hammer f7, the traditional weak spot and win. Look at the start to move pawns which open lines for your bishops, try to develop pieces quickly and harmoniously, get your king safe. The longer the game goes on the more it resembles a normal game. 

Ah that makes sense 

I would just add to what I was saying super, that you should always be on the lookout for odd looking moves. Sometimes the placement of the pieces mean that you can advance a knight like Ng5 or something and threaten mate on h8 for example. Or take a pawn with a bishop from the opening like Bxh7 and forcibly win a rook g8. And if such things can be prevented, sometimes it is only with moves which mess up the opponents position (or yours if its happening to you!). The usual mechanisms to defend things like this are not always there in 960, it's easy to take it for granted that there will be a simple defence as there would be in a regular starting position.