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Edd · Joined: 22 Jan 2006 Posts: 59

Chess 960, invented by Fischer, (originally called Fischerandom), is in my opinion the perfect extension of chess and will be the future of chess.

The first world champion was Leko after a Leko-Adams match, and Svidler was champion for a few years until recently losing his title to Aronian. Each year a large open tournament is held to decide the next challenger at the same time that last year's open winner plays against the reigning champion in a match for the title.

In my opinion, it is clear that Chess960 is the logical extension of chess, preserving it as exactly the same game but just removing the opening theory dilemma of modern chess, (which of course isn't as much a problem at club level but has just about killed chess at professional level and turned it partly into a horrible memory test). Chess960 is popular among most grandmasters - especially young grandmasters - as they feel it gives them freedom for creativity and stops them having to do the hours and hours of opening preparation that has been made necessary since the Kasparov era. Chess960 differs from every other variant of chess in that it is still fundamentally the same game; castling works in the same way and bishops have to be on different colours. The middlesgames and endgames are the same old game of chess but a universe of new openings and strategies is presented, and the great thing is that opening preparation can NEVER become a problem because nobody can learn much concrete opening theory for all 960 positions. With just one starting position there is too much possibility of opening memorization having an effect on the game, but with almost 1000 starting positions, it is impossible in times of time and mental capacity to memorize more than the first 3 or 4 moves for any opening. General opening principles would be far more important than actual move memorization.

Skill, technique, and experience are the only things a player has in Chess960 and this superiority has to be demonstrated without an opening advantage against any opponent. I find this idea attractive; that a grandmaster can still be a grandmaster with no (or very little) memorized openings help, with simply superior judgement, tactics, strategical skill, and endgame technique etc.

This may be an intimidating concept for players with good opening theory in particular openings who would not like to meet players on equal ground from the start of the game. A mark of a truly superior player is to beat their opponent on neutral ground.

I'd like to play Chess960 against players in the chess club, and teach the rules if they are not known. It's truly 959 new chess universes to explore. It'd be fun to do some half hour games etc, but I'd also like to organize a tournament with standard tournament time controls for this excellent game. I believe it's only a matter of time before the ECF and FIDE (and USCF etc) have a Chess960 rating along with the regular rating and rapid rating. This tournament would obviously not be rated though as these rating don't exist at the moment. There's no doubt that all the skills in chess such as tactics, positional considerations, planning, and endgame technique are identical in Chess960, but there is always a fresh position from the beginning and creativity begins from the very start.

Just as a final indication of the true inexhaustability of Chess960, take into account the longest chess career ever: Vicktor Korchnoi - he has played around 5000 rated international games in his career; that corresponds to only playing each chess960 starting position 5 times in his entire career! Or take kasparov; he has played around 2000 career rated games; that corresponds to playing each chess960 position only twice!

bjames · Site Admin Joined: 16 Jan 2006 Posts: 39

Would be interested in playing via email or so. Anyone else ? Perhaps something we could get the club to organise.