What a variant is, or a veiled criticism of Chess960

What is a chess variant? Is it simply “related to, derived from, or inspired by chess” (attributed to David Pritchard on Wikipedia)? Chess960 fits this definition because it randomises the orthodox starting position. But this is all it does, an expert in chess endgame theory has also mastered the endgame of Chess960. What is important about this? Chess experts, including master players, agree that the endgame is just as important to the game as the former two parts, even intrinsically so:

"[I]n order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before anything else; for, whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middlegame and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame." – José Raúl Capablanca (Emphasis in original.)

"... the endgame is as important as the opening and middlegame ... three of the five losses sustained by Bronstein in his drawn ... match with Botvinnik in 1951 were caused by weak endgame play." – David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld

"Studying the opening is just memorizing moves and hoping for traps, but studying the endgame is chess." – Joshua Waitzkin

"If you want to win at chess, begin with the ending." – Irving Chernev

“After a bad opening, there is hope for the middle game. After a bad middle game, there is hope for the endgame. But once you are in the endgame, the moment of truth has arrived." – Edmar Mednis

“David Pritchard, the author of The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, wrote that the "complexity and beauty" of losing chess is found in its endgame.”
Wikipedia, “Losing chess”

José Raúl Capablanca is especially important because he designed a variant with two fairy pieces, which create new endgame possibilities. So is Losing chess, which, in spite of introducing no new pieces, nevertheless has the possibility of an endgame with other than two Kings. In comparison, Chess960 merely changes the statistics of which orthodox endgames are more or less probable.

so basically you think Chess960 isn't a variant? or what? I don't understand

It’s more that I think it’s only a variant in the most elementary sense of being derived from chess. The thing here is that permuting the starting position with the same pieces just makes different traps to hope for, whereas amending a rule which is relevant to the endgame makes a different chess.

In the same sense. What is chess? This is just a variant in the most elementary sense of being derived from Chaturanga.

I think if anything, the article is actually more likely to be construed as having a veiled criticism of regular chess, since it states, by quoting an IM, that regular chess uses openings as a crutch more or less, where the user memorizes openings, in hopes of traps that someone who knows less, might fall into. Chess 960 on the other hand, doesn't offer such an easy way out. There is no way to memorize 960 starting positions and their playable openings. There is no hope of even creating a repertoire either, since the same positions simply do not arise often enough. This is precisely why Bobby Fischer invented it. He felt opening theory was destroying chess. 

Maybe it is, but that doesn’t change the fact that Bobby Fischer only invented new starting points for the path to the regular endgames. There may be no way to memorize any 960 starting positions and their playable openings, but since Bobby Fischer would not change the regular chess pieces, there are starting positions that at least Vladimir Kramnik analyses as having only one genuinely playable opening. Make what you will of Vladimir Kramnik being out of one the US’s leading geopolitical rivals, but Bobby Fischer did use regular chess as a crutch just enough, where the user takes the known pieces as just enough that other pieces are unnecessary to provide for or even to conceive, in favor of a way to make the basic endgames with the minor pieces more frequent and more necessary to know how to perform accurately. This is precisely the opposite of how we progressed from Chaturanga to regular chess.

is it possible, to play chess960 on chess.com?

On the chess.com/variants server ⬆

Or on the chess.com/play server ⬆