Chess 960 - new version of standard chess

The current form of chess was derived from the oldest form of game called ‘Shatranj’ (Chaturanga in Sanskrit). The standard form of chess is a board game played between two players, played on a square-checkered board with 64 squares. The official rules of chess are maintained by World Chess Federation and are described in FIDE Handbook.

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-->The initial setup of the standard chess board



Now, think about a chess board with the starting position of the main pieces is chosen at random. This is called shuffle chess. Anyways, Chess 960 is not just randomizing the starting positions but it maintains the chances of Castling too.

Chess 960 was introduced by the former world chess champion Bobby Fischer and is a variant of shuffle chess. This type of chess is also known to be Fischer Random Chess.Chess960 was officially introduced in 1996 and the first tournament was held in Yugoslavia in the spring of 1996.

-->An example of initial setup of Chess 960
The goal behind the introduction of Chess 960 was to eliminate the complete dominance of openings preparation in standard chess and to replace it with creativity and talent. As the starting position is random it is not possible to fix every move of the game. From the first move, both players have to come up with original strategies and cannot use well-known thinking patterns.
Before starting the game, the positions of the pieces are randomly set up, subject to certain rules, and then the game is played in the same way as standard chess. As usual, all the pieces have the normal moves and each player’s objective is to checkmate the opponent’s king.

Starting positions, rules for determining starting position, rules for castling are different from standard chess. However, the random placement of pieces makes talent and creativity more important than memorization of opening moves.