FISCHER RANDOM CHESS or Chess960

For many years there has been talk of the death of chess and of chess being played out. In the 1920’s and 1930’s Jose Raul Capablanca (World Champion 1921-1927) said that chess was too easy (he went for about six years without losing) and suggested increasing the size of the board.  After Fischer’s awesome victories leading up to him winning the World Championship from Spassky in 1972, he again made similar comments like “old chess is dead, it is worn out”.

In Fischer Random Chess, the pieces on each players back rank are shuffled at random and then players play like in a normal chess game.  As there are 960 different starting positions, preparation is useless and opening theory redundant.  Special rules have been added to ensure each player has a bishop of each colour and to allow castling.  Fischer has even developed a piece shuffler to decide the starting position. 960

Originally announced in June 1996, the first Fischer Random tournament was held in Kanjiza, Yugoslavia a few months later and was won by Peter Leko.  Leko also played a Fischer Random match with British GM Michael Adams in 2001 at Mainz, winning 4½:3½.  In 2002 at Mainz, an open Fischer Random tournament was held which attracted 131 players.  Peter Svidler won the event.  At the 2003 Fischer Random 960 match in the same city, Svidler beat Leko in an eight game match for the (unofficial) World Championship title with a score of 4½:3½.  In 2004 Svidler beat Levon Aronian 4½:3½.  In 2005 Svidler beat Zoltan Almasi again 5:3 then lost ‘his title’ in 2006 against Aronian 3:5.  In 2007 Aronian beat Viswanathan Anand 3½:2½ after tie break games two year later in 2009 Hikaru Nakamura won the world championship beating Levon Aronian 3½-½.

A ranking list is calculated and published sometime monthly, with tournaments generally organized in Germany.  In September 2005 the World Chess960 Ranking was:

1 – P. Svidler 2755 2 – L. Aronian 2752 3 – E. Bacrot 2746 4 – P. Leko 2735 5 – M. Adams 2735 6 – A. Shirov 2723 7 – A. Morozevich 2719 8 – R. Ponomariov 2716 9 – A. Dreev 2711 10 – I. Sokolov 2687