i`ve actually never tried it before. now i`m curious...

Define "horribly."  My guess is that factoring in castling is not as big a deal as you might think, particularly in chosing really strong initial developing moves.  Obviously it would cost the engine some strength, but I doubt most of us could beat Chessmaster in a 960 game, even if we know how to castle and it doesnt. 

Heh, imagine the way you play the opening when facing an unknown line... pretty awful right?  We play openings well because they've been played and analysed for hundreds of years... what I mean is even if they're not the best moves the computer's 960 opening will be better than yours, you wouldn't even know if they were good moves or not.

Stockfish is the strongest open source engine that supports FRC  Shredder is by far the strongest engine when it comes to opening a FRC game.  Miles better than Rybka which isn't optimized for the first 10 moves of a chess game per Kaufman.  Naum and Hiarcs also support FRC as does the free engine bright.  The CCRL maintains a FRC ratings list.  Google will turn it up I'm sure.

It will always be Fischer Random Chess as far as I'm concerned.  Give the man some credit.

I have a 960(FRC!) Rybka engine, no idea how it performs though, probably alot better than me atleast.

I just meant relative to the normal games opening book. I am not under any assumption that I would outplay it in any stage of the game :P.

You can turn off book for most engines and let the engine play standard chess without any book at all...  (Or manually play engine moves instead of book by looking at the engine evals.) You'll find contemporary engines don't play the open horribly at all. They play it just fine and if you aren't a GM or an anti-engine specialist you don't have a chance. In 960, where you have the same handicap as the engine, having no book, you get squished like a bug.

You can check them all here:

The Best Chess960 Engines

No, we also don't call chess by the name of some person in India or Persia who invented it. (If Fischer did invent 960 which is not certain.) We don't call telephone Pupinphone etc.

About the name:

What's in a name? Chess960, FRC...

Naming (the origin of the denomination Chess960)

This particular chess variant has a number of different names. The first names applied to it include "Fischer Random Chess" and "Fischerandom Chess".

Hans-Walter Schmitt (chairman of the Frankfurt Chess Tigers e.V.) is an advocate of this chess variant, and he started a brainstorming process to choose a new name for it. The new name had to obey the following requirements on the parts of some leading grandmasters:

1. It should not use parts of the name of any Grandmaster colleague
2. It should not include negatively biased or "spongy" elements like "random" or "freestyle"
3. It should be understood worldwide.

This effort culminated in the name "Chess960", deriving from the number of different initial positions.

R. Scharnagl, another proponant of this variant, has consistently used the term FullChess. He believes "FullChess" to also satisfy these premises, and that it also emphasizes the compatible embedding of the traditional game of chess.

Like it or not, the truth is that Chess960 is nowadays so extended that even in the most "selected" chess circles they always use that term in detriment of the former ones. Now you don't say the FRC world champion but Chess960 World Champion

Thankfully, you don't get to decide which name I use.  You can call it whatever you like but it doesn't change the fact that it is Fischer Random Chess.

Curiously, you edited out some rather important lines from the wikipedia article. 

You wrote:

'This particular chess variant has a number of different names. The first names applied to it include "Fischer Random Chess" and "Fischerandom Chess".'

And here's the full paragraph:

"This particular chess variant has a number of different names. Most broadly, it is known as Fischer Random Chess. After Bobby Fischer formalised his variation of Shuffle Chess, the names applied to it included "Fischer Random Chess" and "Fischerandom Chess"."

Removing sentences that directly contradict the point you're trying to make looks like a deliberate attempt to mislead and is very bad form.  Shame on you.

To be fair, he could have been looking at a different page than you are right now. Wikipedia articles change fairly often.

[quote]Thankfully, you don't get to decide which name I use. [/quote]

Hilarious.

In my experience, it's usually referred to as "Chess960".  I'm quite happy about this, as "Fischer Random Chess" (especially "Fischerandom Chess") sounds really bad to me.

Note that "Chess960" has far more Google results than do "Fischer Random Chess", "Fischerandom Chess", and "Fischerrandom Chess".

By the way, doesn't it feel odd making this argument when the Wikipedia page itself is entitled "Chess960"?

Not when I found the page by searching for Fischer Random Chess.  Like I said earlier, I don't care what you or anyone else calls it.  It will always be Fischer Random Chess to me.  Apparently, I'm not alone since the article says that it's broadly referred to as Fischer Random Chess. 

Let's face it, Chess960 is the politically correct name.  Erik basically said as much when he rolled out 960.  He he has a business to run so I don't fault him for it.  It's the smart business move because there are a lot of people who can't separate Fischer the asshole from Fischer the genius and these people are uncomfortable giving the man even an ounce of respect.  I understand where they're coming from but strongly disagree. All the selective paraphrasing in the world isn't going to erase the fact that it was Fischer who created the game. 

I think the asshole genius deserves to have his name on the game (and the clock) he created. 

 You forget that anyone can edit the wikipedia at any time, perhaps it was you who edited it today just to bring "shame" on me :) .... when I copied that paragraph it said exactly what I posted above...

 At any rate, and exactly for that reason, I don't expect to find the absolute truth on Wikipedia... when it says it is "Most broadly, it is known as Fischer Random Chess. After Bobby Fischer formalised his variation of Shuffle Chess", clearly it is stating the opinion of the editor who wrote that as it is not based on any real facts.(1)

There are several objetive ways to find out which one is used more frequently nowdays:

- type "Chess960" and "Fischer Random Chess" into Google, Yahoo or any search provider and see how many sites it returns.

• "Chess960" - 932,000
• "Fischer Random Chess" - 11,200
• "Fischerandom" - 20,600

Finally, the fact that the World Championship is officially recognised as:

"Chess960 World Championship" it is enough as to provide a clear statement on which name has certainly prevailed.

(1) you can check what it says right now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960