How do you start a chess 960 game?

From the Online Chess page (Play -> Online Chess). Where it says Start New Game in large friendly orange letters, DO NOT click on begin.

Instead, under the Play Chess set of functions, click on Start New Game.

Click on show more advanced options >>

You'll see a drop-down menu labelled Game Type.

Select Chess960.

(Perhaps this tortuous route needs better signposting?)

Thanks! And I agree that it needs more specific instructions.

There are more specific instructions here in the chess960 FAQ page :)

is there any difference between chess960 and the chess played more regularly here in this site?

is there any difference between chess960 and the chess played more regularly here in this site?

Chess960 (also called FischerRandom) is just like regular chess... except that the starting position is shuffled to include 960 different possible positions! So you can throw out your opening book, but keep your opening principles. You play the same, but you just have different placement of pieces on the starting row.

The only change in rules is that castling is funky - when you castle, the king/rook end up in the same position as when they castle in regular chess (king on g-file and rook on f-file for kingside, king on c-file and rook on d-file for queenside).

The 960 comes from the number of different possible starting positions where there is a rook on each side of the king and where there are bishops of opposite color.

Can someone update the instructions for chess 960? I tried to follow the instructions above to start a 960 game and it says that I need to change my rating range to match my current rating but I cant find any option even under advanced options to set the rating range

Are you trying to start an online/daily/correspondence  960 game?  Are you using the app or the website?

I have the exact same problem. Every time I try to initiate a 960 game, I get the following message:

"Oops?! We noticed the following errors in your form:

• Your rating range must include your own rating. Try lowering your minimum rating or increasing your maximum rating."

Somehow it's using a rating range that I cannot change and does not allow me to generate an open seek?! Very frustrating!

Can a 960 game only be started from the old site?  I don't see how to do it from the new v3 site (which I prefer).

Live 960 is only available on the v3 site and app.

That is weird. I just started up a seek and it started the process. Though, when I did it once before, I could see the seek in the graph and I'm not seeing it now.

Thank you, Martin.  Is there a way to start correspondence-style (2- or 3-days/move) 960 games from the v3 site?

You should be able to, though I'm not see it right off on the web side. I'll look a little more.

Sure enough, as soon as I post I find it. This is really counter intuitive but go to Open Challenges -> Create Challenge and then you can change the game type.

Thanks again, Martin!  Expert sleuthing.  

Meanwhile I just went to the old site for a moment to start a couple of the longer 960 games -- it wasn't a great hardship. ;-)

I was able to start a 960 game as follows:

Play -> Online Chess -> Start New Game -> Choose Opponent-Random -> change options as needed (e.g., 960 instead of standard) -> Create New Game

Seems a little convoluted but it finally worked.

Once you have set it there, I believe the settings stick.  So,  if you play that a lot, the next time it will be there already (but doesn't help if you play a mix).