Moscow Chess960 (Fischerrandom) Event Won by Grigoriants on Tiebreak

A Chess960 (Fischerrandom) rapid tournament was held on Friday and Saturday at the Moscow Center for the Education of Chess. Ten participants fought in a two-day round robin, and in the end Sergey Grigoriants and Boris Grachev tied for first place. Grigoriants had the best tiebreak and was declared winner. As always with Fischerrandom, many fun and wild games were played.

Photos © P. Plotnikov courtesy of the tournament website

For many years Chess960 (or Fischerrandom), the chess variant where the pieces on the first and eighth rank are shuffled, was played by the world's best players at the Chess Classic in Mainz, Germany. Unfortunately this great event ceased to exist a few years back. It showed time and again that there are many fans of this game, most notably Levon Aronian, world #2 in classical chess.

On Friday and Saturday a serious and strong Chess960 tournament was held in Moscow. At the Center for the Education of Chess, ten players gathered for a round robin event over two days: Vladimir Belov, Andrei Deviatkin, Olga Girya, Boris Grachev, Sergey Grigoriants, Mikhail Kuznetsov, David Paravyan, Alexey Sarana, Anastasia Savina and Andrey Stukopin. The time control was 20 minutes plus 10 seconds increment.

For each round, a different starting position was chosen. In the first, the players had to start with a “queen fianchetto” and in the following game White managed to build up decisive pressure on taht a1-h8 diagonal:

In the following game we see some important rules for Chess960 in action. The pieces on the first and eighth rank are set up randomly (though Black basically copies White's setup) except that the bishops must be placed on opposite-color squares, and the king must be placed on a square between the rooks. Castling is still possible: basically the rule is that the king and rook need to end up like in classical chess, so Kc1 and Rd1, or Kg1 and Rf1. The position quickly became quite normal, and it was all about White's center and Black attacking it:

Sometimes you might forget that at the very first move White is attacking something. The following is a typical crazy Chess960 game:

And what about this one?

Also in the following game the players play quite creatively:

If you want to see more games (and if the chess program on your computer can handle Chess960 games), you can download the complete PGN here.

Moscow Chess960 2014 | Final Standings

#	Name	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	Pts	SB
1	Grigoriants,Sergey		½	½	1	½	1	1	1	1	½	7.0/9	28.50
2	Grachev,Boris	½		0	½	1	1	1	1	1	1	7.0/9	25.75
3	Deviatkin,Andrei	½	1		½	½	1	½	1	0	1	6.0/9
4	Stukopin,Andrey	0	½	½		½	0	1	1	1	1	5.5/9
5	Belov,Vladimir	½	0	½	½		1	0	0	½	1	4.0/9
6	Savina,Anastasia	0	0	0	1	0		1	½	0	1	3.5/9	12.75
7	Sarana,Alexey	0	0	½	0	1	0		½	½	1	3.5/9	12.25
8	Paravyan,David	0	0	0	0	1	½	½		1	½	3.5/9	11.50
9	Kuznetsov,Mikhail V	0	0	1	0	½	1	½	0		0	3.0/9
10	Girya,Olga	½	0	0	0	0	0	0	½	1		2.0/9