A few quick points on this.
1) I know that it is now officially called Chess960...but I sorta think they should have kept it as Fischer Random. I mean, he did create it. It should bear his name.
2) I love that it is now an officially recognized FIDE event. This is progress. Which leads into the next point.
3) I think Fischer Random should replace chess as the standard chess. Of course, it will never replace it in name. But I think it should become the de facto most important event.
3a) There are youtube clips of Fischer talking about how he hated chess now because of the massive role that "opening theory" had grown to play in the game. This will only continue to get worse. And, yes, he was a crazy man at that point. But he was also right. I can't imagine anyone arguing with a straight face that chess becomes a better game when the first dozen or so moves on both sides by the top players are essentially memorized. Because that'd just be a silly argument.
Consider me fully aboard the Fischer Random train.
Discuss.
So you want Phisher Ransom Chess. Well then.
It attracts a single-digit percent share of all chessplayers. There has been no real boom for 15 years and it is unlikely to come.
The thing I find funny about Fischer Random is that he wanted to get rid of the theory in chess, but you could argue there's more theory because of the 960 different starting positions. Makes me wonder what he would've thought about it now if he was still alive
In my opinion only top chess became boring.
Fischer random replacing normal chess would indeed be exiting, even though closed positions would probably become much stronger.
But i believe some (idiotic) people will actually memorize theory of 960 positions.
I like the variant, but don't buy into that it has to be named after the person who invented it - especially someone who is as hateful and violent as Bobby Fischer.
1) The problem with the name lies in the word "random". Chess960 has as much to do with randomness as classical chess. In this case, it is simply misleading and does not do justice to the variant. I think a neutral name is far better. Fischer will be remembered one way or another.
2) I don't think Chess960 will replace classical chess anytime soon. I wouldn't want that either. After all, they can exist in parallel. I would love to play in a Chess960 OTB tournament, with a long time control.
3) That Chess960 has not established itself so far is, in my opinion, because there are dozens of opening books/DVDs and the publishers have no interest at all in changing that. It is their business model.
Even amateur players would find it difficult, because everyone has their favorite opening in which they have invested a lot of time. He would not be able to play it anymore. You can't remember games that have been played, because you don't even know the starting position. "10 years ago I defeated an IM in French Winawer with the sharp Poisen Pawn Variation after a spectacular knight sacrifice" simply sounds better than "10 years ago I won against an IM with the starting position 234". You just don't have a personal connection to it.
What I can't understand is when people say they don't play Chess960 because the positions are so unusual and it takes time to get normal positions.If they want to play the same thing all the time, they can play tic-tac-toe. At least I didn't know a bit of theory when I learned chess and played it anyway. The original fascination of chess was certainly not opening theory for anyone.
@TheBoarShark I have to disagree with you on that point. There's really no way for living, breathing, human beings who have to sleep from time to time to study opening theory when they don't know what opening is coming.
@chummerI feel like this is the reason they wanted a new name. And, yes, he devolved into something less than your ideal human being. But I don't see how that has any relevance to his invention of the game, or his place in chess history.
You must live in Northern Virginia and be on the school board that just voted to rename both Thomas Jefferson and George Mason elementary schools....because they owned slaves.
@DeepHuman_95 I actually think the application of a focking name to seemingly every attainable position within the first half a dozen or so moves in a game is, well, really silly.
I'm a chess noob, really. I remember years ago seeing a Law and Order SVU episode that made reference to the "Ruy Lopez" and thinking "oh, that's cool. A chess setup so famous that they gave it a name".
Little did I know.....
I'd like to see more chess 960/Fischer random events OTB, but there's no reason at all that it has to replace standard chess. If you like it better than just play that instead. It's like saying Tennis should replace ping pong because it's "better".
I think what we could start to see is just having a few chess 960 events mixed in, just like how we have events with different time controls, or how in running there are various events such as 100M, 800M etc..
As far as opening theory and memorization etc. goes I get the point but it's only really a problem for the top .1% of players so I don't think most of the chess community needs to be worried about stuff like that.
Still I think having some Chess960 events could be invigorating and I'd really like to see some slow events where we have time time to get into the position and be creative.
