Don't want 960

There won't be a lot of familiarity, but the basic overall strategy doesn't change at all. The goal of the opening is to try to get control of the center, and try to get some advantage that you can carry over into the middle game, just like in standard chess. 

Some basic strategic principles will apply eg:

-king safety

-material

-initiative

-pieces coordination

-pawn structures (very similar )

-center control

-open files / diagonals

But yes, you will not be getting the kind of middlegames you typically get say from your favourite defence.

Sorry for being blunt here, but as you improve you'll learn that there's a lot more to playing the opening than that.

Why would anyone who has spent decades learning chess opening theory want to discard their effort/work/experience by throwing all that away and playing Fischer Random Chess ?!  I certainly didnt spend all that time and money and effort learning certain openings and recurring middlegames from those openings just to chunk it all away and play FRC ! If chess is ever replaced by something like FRC I will just go back to hunting and fishing...... no problem ! 

Its only a matter of time anyway before FRC develops its own body of theory as well and then what ?! 

I suspect that, with your experience and understanding of normal chess, you would beat most people very easily at Chess 960.

That said, I also hope that we will not discard normal chess.

Surprising thread.

I expected that people would love Chess960, because it's just regular old chess without the biggest flaw in chess: that even a beginner can play as well as the World Champion for the first X moves of the game.  Chess960, therefore, becomes a game of tactical and strategic skill once again, which is exactly what chess is supposed to be.

I would recommend that those of you who have never played Chess960 play at least one game.

is CC a disgrace to the "purists" in this thread? it's obviously not the way it was played in the good ole' days..

I very much doubt that a beginner would play like a world champion for the first 5-10moves in 960.

Reb and Tryst agreeing on something?!  There must be a snowball fight today in hell!

960 is fun.  Beats backgammon any day.

It's pretty hard to identify a dissenting opinion without reading it first.

Has anyone considered the option of playing both?  Why do they have to be mutually exclusive?  Variety is the spice of life. 

Well said!

Rofl. Touché.

If you are responding to an_arbitrary_name, that's exactly his point. In Chess960 a begginer would be crushed by a GM from move one, whereas in Chess the beginner will (mechanically) play like a World Champ up to the point where he can't remember the lines anymore. Then in the next move he will just hang his horsie (apud NM ozzie).

In my unsolicited opinion, Fischer got this one right. When (and if) I reach a point in chess in which my only chance of getting better at the game is memorizing openings variations, I know that that will be my limit. I'll probably turn to Chess960 then, because there's no way I can see myself having fun beating Ruy Lopez variations into my brain. There is a lot of entertainment out there competing for my attention and I don't want to put chess on the "work" section of my life.

That being said, if Fischer's aim was to eliminate memorization from the game altogether, he got that wrong. Even in Chess960 you need to resort to memory for mating patterns, end game moves (e.g. K vs K+P, mate with two bishops) and tactics. But yeah, it does address what I see as the silliest part of the game.

Lol, I haven't been tuning my sarcasm-o-meter as often as i should, so I'm not sure how serious is NM Reb' comment. Anyway, I think that's an excellent point in favor of Chess960.

I've got two mates live in my village who are pretty good chess players; though they've never entered tournaments or belonged to a club' they play on several online chess sites. We all three enjoy playing standard and are all over 2000 on this site, but we do not live for chess and our knowledge of the openings would probably be laughable to most on this site - don't seem to stop us winnin' a game or two

When we meet up, to play across the board, we almost invariably play 960 - just because of the variety and the freshness of each individual game - oh my goodness! you actually have to think right from the first move !! - well I'll be...!

Chess ain't s'posed to be some mechanical performance based on a lifetime of blinkered study, it s'posed to be an exercise of your little grey cells an' a bit of fun besides - it a GAME for heaven's sake !! Me, I preferred playin' rugby, but I doubt I could manage 80 minutes of that nowadays without seriously endangerin' me well-being, I can play 960 for hours without gettin' either bored or hospitalised 

I believe those that say 960 will eventually supercede standard in popularity because the natural psyche of the human animal is attracted to the colourful and to new experiences. It's only robots that treat routine and the mundane as some kind of deity, and that's because they're programmed that way

Maybe for a bit of balance, I don't think that studying openings variations is boring or pointless, especially not when you are on the level that you can understand the ideas of the openings. But I do have a problem with memorizing long lines that reach well into the middlegame.

Some good comments here. I think one of the reasons most players are bad at the middle and endgames is that they spend so much effort on the opening theory and lines. And let's be honest - sure it's good to know, but is it fun? We now have lines running into dozens of moves. Just watch any tournament kibitz: "Is it still book?"

With Chess 960 you're smack into the intricacies of the game, and as stated above, if you're good it will show. But for beginners and others just getting into the game, it's a wonderful way of getting enthusiastic about the game and its possibilities, while learning.
And then you can graduate to the classical game, and know that after you have mastered the opening theory you'll be well equipped to handle the challenges following that ... instead of having spent most of your time learning openings, and not getting around to endgame intricacies.

Worth thinking about. We did, after playing 960 over Christmas, and the kids are playing it now, as I type.

Again ridiculous comments from 960 proponents, who are continuously trying to claim that real chess is only about memorizing Ruy-Lopez or Sicilian variants which is of course far from the truth.We even have 1600 rated players claim that they solved chess and their only way to get better is to memorize opening lines. How preposterous.

960 is silly and ridiculous. There is nothing good about it and nothing to learn there that is not in real chess. It is there to hurt, ruin and destroy the beautiful game of real chess and as such should not be played and encouraged among chess players.