960 is just a distraction. Something not to be taken seriously imo. Why bother to attempt any serious study? I play it occaisionally, make my moves more by feel than analysis. Only 1650 but once in awhile a interesting position presents itself. I'd rather play bug house to lightly pass away an evening.
Chess960 is severely misunderstood.
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Leave the pieces on their original squares,then randomize the pawns.You can call it chess 690. IMO,much much better than 960.
Patzership wrote:
Leave the pieces on their original squares,then randomize the pawns.You can call it chess 690. IMO,much much better than 960.
LOL 690
69
xDDDDD
Fischer chess is beautiful, from move one, just idyllic. Chess is beautiful from move ten.
Fischer chess sucks, as all chess variants suck.
Boozyboyo wrote:
Fischer chess is beautiful, from move one, just idyllic. Chess is beautiful from move ten.
Chess is beautiful from move one as well - but only when players bother to think about each move as it is played. Fischer random returns chess to its origins of 1500 years ago before memorisation, when players used to sit down over the board with unmoved pieces, contemplating the joy of the start and seeing the beauty of potential moves available to them and to enjoy the beautiful feeling of complete creativity available. I noticed this with Nakamura in the recent Saint Louis Fischer Random competition with Caruana. Nakamura sat there with the unmoved pieces with his coffee (or redbull whatever) just enjoying the experience of move one novelty.
People say that in the 21st century, chess still has all that beauty from move one because the players are free to play whatever move they want. In reality though - that is not what happens. Players have a simple automatic routine in their heads these days when they play the first moves in Chess that overrides the actual move they are playing. They are really just thinking the same each move "does this opening move draw me and my opponent away from what I and they are familiar with or not?"
there are many rooms in the world of chess.
there is no reason to argue one for another.
play as you wish, play without disagreement for those who choose to play in a different manner.
but if i could offer a south asian variation to western classical chess, i would limit the power of the western bishop to the south asian elephant..three spaces only.
the richness of this discussion is the proof of random chess as a sepertate and rich stimulat.
Soooo... Is any of you actually playing 960 on live chess?
It's available in V3, and V3 is already out to everyone. I've created several 1 minute challenges, but have gotten no match yet.
Much talk, no play...
i like 960 and it what i play with my son when he comes home at times.
i do not play it here for i play chess so poorly for i am old and also have never had the abilility to think three moves ahead.
i see a beautiful painting. it does not mean i can paint.
but to be honest to your point. i have challenged you to an unrated 960 game.
Challenge accepted.
( i bet i do not last six moves ).
i will have to challenge you though as my settings do not allow challenges.
______________________________________________________________
you are playing white. let us begin sir !
OK, two games as black and white is fair. Let's go.
two ? two ? ( now i have to live with two humiliations 
..).
bauta wrote:
I posted the following analysis in a group thread and got a very positive response from some readers, so I thought I would post it here in the subject-specific forum. I hope you enjoy it.
Chess960 is severely misunderstood. It is not a variant. Rather, chess is a special case of Chess960. You have a one in 960 chance, if you are randomly selecting the starting position, of getting normal chess, which you will then play just as you would in a conventional game. In this respect, chess960 is merely a generalization of chess. As a mathemetician, this is a very familiar construct to me. Just as you can generalize from the integers to the rational numbers, and from the rational numbers to the real numbers, you can generalize chess as chess960. At each level you get an additional infinite set.
Almost all of the criticisms about the unsatisfying "character" of some starting positions and the invalidation of aesthetic considerations are meritless for a few reasons:
1) There is no significant history of serious competitions, so it is not possible to determine how master players with an interest in winning will exploit a given position.
2) Computers are quite bad at openings, but even given that, there have been no serious attempts to analyze the positions. Even if it is impossible to learn very much (relatively speaking) from this kind of analysis, it hasn't even been seriously attempted.
3) People have a very strong psychological tendency to force new information into frames of reference they are accustomed to. People become accustomed to the eccentricities of the "standard" opening position through decades of exposure. In the case of titled players, they may scarcely have any memories that predate their familiarity with the standard opening position, since most have been playing since near-infancy. Furthermore, most of these players have spent many thousands of hours studying opening theory, so they are psychologically predisposed to create reasons to retain a system that rewards that hard work, instead of one that invalidates it 959 out of 960 times. Despite this, some of the top players (Nakamura, et al) thoroughly support 960.
4) Some of the criticisms about chess960 are really criticisms about randomization and its effect on the planning and opening theory that is presumably required to produce beautiful, aesthetically pleasing games. There are two rebuttals to this: a) Aesthetic beauty can be and has been the realm of composers, and the question of whether or not it necessarily belongs in competitions, per se, is an open one. Even so, there are plenty of top level games that are ugly, stodgy, and boring. I think it's likely that these games would actually become more pleasing if opening theory were dispensed with. b) The generalization of chess to new starting positions does not depend upon randomization. I think these two concepts should be separated. The fact that 960 positions can be played does not necessitate that we always select one at random. That is, there is no reason that a 960 championship can not select, one year in advance, a position that will be played at the premier event. Naturally, most other events would adopt that position, and players would develop opening theory for that position over the course of the year. This would reward originality and begin to tell us about the patterns inherent in all similar starting positions. One could even, say, base the opening position on the last three digits of the calendar year. In this way, people could prepare decades in advance. This would be a glorious expansion of creativity in opening theory, and probably teach us a lot about the principles of the standard opening position as well. This kind of selection is done by less demanding games such as Mah Jong, were certain tile sets are selected by the national orginaztion for each year to be included in play by members.
I could go on and on. My point is that most people haven't thoroughly examined this subject before deigning to pooh-pooh something that not only they but everyone knows almost nothing about (because of its sheer combinatorial complexity).
Best regards.
The best post I've read on chess.com
I think in hundreds of years when computers and analysing minds have squeezed the life out of all openings and most positions, the world will move towards a form of 960 as mainstream chess.
One of the posts above referred to historical chess not changing much over the years. However, I believe the Queen used to only be able to move one square at a time and the knights used to be Elephants. That would change opening theory a lot. Haha
Chess will always evolve, if indeed to slowly for us to notice. And 960 is beautiful, if not fully understood. I just wish I was better at it. 
After Komodo is finished with humiliating us all
BugHouse will reign!
Jan 11, 2016
0
#39
I think 960 is misunderstood by those who often support it.
Ask a pianist to play a random piece with a random instrument. Ask an athlete to play a random position in a random sport. The art and competition is not as deep or meaningful.
960 adds to the number of possible games, but detracts from the depth of game play itself. Chess study is more than opening positions. Middlegame ideas, structures, and maneuvers, are studied and known to serious players. Removing all of this helps level the playing field for those who do not wish to study, but it lowers down to them, it does not raise it up for all of us.
My thoughts also. 960 is a distraction to be played out of late night boredom. I've played I think 100 games in 5 years here. I spend at most 5 secs a move. Sometimes a normal position can occur. My rating of 1600+ is crazy high compared to the time spent analyzing.
Losers chess, monster chess, bug house are just as valid imo.
X_PLAYER_J_X:
I think perhaps you misunderstand me. My point (1), about master players exploiting different initial positions, was to argue against the notion that some people have proposed, which is that many 960 positions are inherently bad, obviously unbalanced, or will lead to ugly games. My point was, there is simply no evidence to support those allegations, because we have not seen a lot of very good players play them. When we have, those players can demonstrate and explain why or why not those positions are unsound or horribly unbalanced. Then we can argue about it. It took decades to demonstrate that certain opening lines were unsound. It will take some time to determine the character of 960 opening positions. But it is certainly premature to ridicule their validity with almost no data.
As for the other point (4), I think you are in complete agreement with me. I do think that opening theory can be developed, and I think that some people who are fond of opening theory want to attack 960 for precluding it, when I think that is not an indispensable feature. Inasmuch as theory refers to principles rather than rote memorization, it is certainly possible. Beyond that, detailed lines from specific opening positions are possible and could be developed as I outline in my original post.
Chess960 memorisation will be shallower but broader. Chess is narrow but deep. In 960 an educated guess is that there is 20-40 starts that an elite player would need to memorise for optimal play especially in black defense. So roughly 40*6ply = 240 moves compare with chess which is at least a factor of 10 higher memorisation. So Chess960 will have stuff for memorisation fanatics to enjoy.
Don't you think that after almost twenty years (960 twenty year anniversary June next year) and all those games of 960 played in public on the servers and over the board, plus 1000's of GM's privately studying Chess960 to find flaws in it (including Kasparov), AND one of the greatest players in history studying 960 in detail (Bobby Fischer) surely somebody would have come up with at least one position that is grossly unfair (where black has no chance at competitive play). BUT there simply has not been one case. Is that not sufficient evidence that Chess960 is a sound game?