Welcome to another episode of my HiveChess Lecture, where I get to share some chess lessons with my chess fans and lovers of chess. It gives me great pleasure and excitement to discuss this variant of chess, known as chess960, which has gained popularity among chess fans and enthusiasts, thanks to the ongoing Freestyle Chess Championship in Las Vegas.
Suppose you are conversant with my HiveChess Lectures. In that case, you should have noticed by now that this topic happens to be different from the previous ones I have done in the past, which were focused on chess openings, tactics, and even chess principles to help guide your play if you are a beginner in the game.
I decided to give you all something different, or more like a brief history about how Chess960 began. Suppose you do not know about this variant of chess called chess960. In that case, it is still the same chess we all play and all the pieces still move the same way they do in standard chess and all chess rules applied, except at the beginning of the game, the minor and major pieces, namely the King, Queen, Knights, Bishops and Rooks are placed on random squares unlike their initial squares in a standard chess game. There are about 960 ways these pieces could be randomly arranged, hence giving it the number 960 in its name, chess960.
Note: The pawns still maintain their initial position on the 2nd rank for white and on the 7th rank for Black.
How did Chess960 come about?
The chess variant Chess960 was introduced by the legendary Chess Grandmaster, Bobby Fischer, in the year 1996, in Buenos Aires, when he said he had gotten tired of the traditional form of playing chess. This is because he claims modern chess now depends so much on memorized positions and familiar openings.
I cannot help but wonder what he would say about the modern chess of this 21st century, where engines are now a strong training companion for the chess players of today.
Bobby Fischer's invention of the chess variant, chess960, is the reason why the variant is also known as Fischer's Random, since the inventor is Bobby Fischer.
Although there is a randomness to placing the pieces at the back of the pawn, there are still some strict rules that must be maintained in Chess960, namely
There must be a bishop placed on a light square and the other placed on a dark square.
The pawns remain in their initial position
The king has to be placed between the two rooks to reserve the opportunity for castling.
All captures are still the same
Promotion to another piece with the pawn remains the same.
The introduction of this variant of chess helps to promote creativity on the chessboard while excluding the need for any form of opening preparation. Bobby Fischer believed that the need for opening preparation and memorized positions ruined the genuine creativity of crafting something new or some form of novelty on the chessboard through hard thinking. Therefore, he fully supports this form of playing chess.
It is interesting to know that although opening preparation is ruined when playing chess960, there are still some opening principles that are applicable in chess960. Like controlling the center with your pawns and castling your king to safety as fast as possible. This is because the randomness in the arrangement of the pieces, things can get pretty bad very quickly when you choose to forgo these two simple principles, control of the center and the king's safety.
Since 1996 to date, chess960 has become popular among grandmasters like Hikaru, Magnus, and Fabiano, who are all fans of this form of chess. Although Hikaru and Magnus have been knocked out of the Freestyle Chess Championship, a chess tournament where the kind of chess being played there is chess960, Fabiano is still in the run, infact, he is in the semi-final alongside Levon, Arjun, and Niemann.
There is even a Fischer's Random Chess Championship organized by FIDE, which was last held in 2022 and won by Hikaru Nakamura. This goes to show that Chess960 is a popular variant of chess. You should try playing it and share your thoughts about the variant.
That is a wrap for this lecture. See you in the next HiveChess lecture.
I am @samostically, I love to talk and write about chess because I benefited a lot from playing chess and I love writing about chess.
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