Fritz 960

Since most chess engines now have massive opening books in them due to their inability to pick the best openings simply by engine searching, how do the top level of computers fair at a game of 960?

I'd recon that if you load it up with a specific 960 engine it ought to play better than most of us. Dunno if there is a Fritz 960 though, but I know Rybka has one.

I think Fritz 12 also offers support for chess 960. I haven't really analyzed any chess 960 games with engine so I don't have much experience but I wouldn't be suprised if it would be even more difficult for humans to beat engine there.

The main strength of computers is brute force calculation whereas humans rely on their knowledge and understanding of typical structures. In chess 960 large parts of this knowledge become redundant. When both the computer and human are playing without the support of over 100 years of opening theory I would assume that this actually favours the machine but that's just my guess.

While that is the disadvantage of humans in 960, computers heavily rely on opening books in regular chess. Engines are notorious for picking bad opening moves without the help of a book.

Yes, but humans also rely on their openings study and not only with concrete variations but also with knowing the typical middlegame plans for arising positions. Actually chess 960 demonstrates pretty well how difficult the opening stage of chess game is and humans will play both the opening and arising non standard midlegames much worse in chess 960.

I'm not really sure if the modern engines are that bad at opening even without the book as we are sometimes led to believe. I know that they are capable of coming up pretty dubious moves in certain postions but I believe most of the time they should play plausible moves even if not the ones regarded most critical by the contemporary theory.