Why Chess 960 is Bad

"Chess960 is healthy and good for your chess. If you get into it and not just move the pieces to achieve known positions it really improves your chess vision." GM Levon Aronian.

@Rocanegra @ungewichtet

Chess 960 offers so much. And players like @Sarg0n are correct when saying most players don't care about it.

They are missing out imo.

Last night I was looking over a game of 960 that I played against Gata Kamsky during a tournament in 2020.

It was such a strange coincidence because the day before I was studying his games because the London System was all the rage in 2020 and he is known for that opening.

Luckily I was playing in Zen Mode so I didn't know who I was playing and was not intimidated.

He must of only started playing 960 because his rating was about 1900 so it was good timing for me to play a legend in the purest form of chess.

And I went on to play the London System, which I'm bored to tears with now. With 960 that will never happen.

@Sacmaniac said in #1:

If I was king, I would simplify 960 down to only 8 positions and give them all names instead of numbers. We can use the international phonetic alphabet that every pilot in the world uses.

1. Alpha
2. Bravo
3. Charlie
4. Delta
5. Echo
6. Foxtrot
7. Golf
8. Hotel

We can decide on the positions later by vote or by artificial intelligence and it's not important for the big picture. What is important is that they will breathe new life into chess for the next 1500 years. There will be far less draws. The most creative players will win.

In OTB games it's easy to set up the pieces.

Player 1 choses king and bishop placement.
Player 2 choses rook and knight placement.

As for OTB Castling rules, we either spend a minute and learn them or eliminate them all together. We can agree before the game which we prefer.

I am confused. Do you want the opening positions limited to 8 different ones, or do you want the players to choose? Note that if players get to choose, player 1 has a big advantage: she can pick out 72 different placements of King and Bishops, leaving only 13 remaining options for player 2.

@CasualPlays said in #17:

I like Garry Kasparov’s idea of choosing 1 position for a “season”, and letting that be the position that is played until a season ends (after which point, another position is chosen). Kasparov sees a season as lasting one year, but arguably it could be a shorter timeframe for online play. Something from 1-3 months or so.

Imagine if lichess implemented chess960 seasons (with a unique trophy for some achievement in a chess960 season to promote play). That would be so cool.

Lichess is a chess platform that could easily promote new ideas and change within the game, given the large playerbase. It’s surprising that they do not utilize this to promote new ideas for the game.

How long before a season starts is it know which position is going to be played? This would matter for a tournaments played at the beginning of the season: do players have to cram their preparation in a short time, or can every one prepare for a long time, regardless whether in their season the match is being played?

@Abigail-III Thanks for the chance to clarify again.

The 8 positions would only be for the official online games for sites like Lichess.org. These are decided by Lichess or random picks by AI. However finding 8 positions is quite easy OTB.

1. Switch the King and Queen
2. Switch the knights with the bishops
3. Switch the rooks with the Knights
   4.Switch the rooks with the bishops
4. Switch the knights and bishops on the king side
5. Switch the knights and bishops on the queen side
6. Switch the rooks and bishops on the king side
7. Switch the rooks and bishops on the queen side.

That said, these are just some basic ideas, and these official 8 online positions would be constantly changing anyways.

This is about the big picture, I'd just like to start the conversation going and we are not married to these positions or the small details.

I use only 8 positions because my point is to make the new chess more popular by making it simple to grasp for those reluctant to try it.

Instead of Chess 960 I like to call it" Alpha Hotel "because it is catchier than the number 960.

Also it combines the international phonetic language for the letters a-h files.

For OTB games we simply place the pieces starting with the king, rooks, bishops and knights. This way both players choose twice. The pawns don't change and the queen is placed on a square by process of elimination.

in order to make it more popular so that engineers on sites like Lichess will devote time to implementing ideas we need to streamline the concept that Fischer introduced and cut the fat.

Fischer Random is not a good name because some players have an aversion to him for several reasons and will be biased against playing "his" game out of spite.

Chess 960 is redundant...and every now and then the standard configuration pops up and that is not a, "real", change so it's really Chess 959, which is losing the plot. The last thing I want to do is occasionally play the standard position when I'm prepared for something random.

Again, this is all about brainstorming and talking about "how", and not just repeating the same complaints and offering no positive feedback by those with a vested interest in the status quo....which is a very tiny percentage of chess players.

i think Chee960 is fine for what it sets out to do. Eliminate theory, and prearrangement. More positions are better for that. 8 is too few imo.

I find the castling confusing. The king and rook are some random places and after you castle they end up in their standard locations. To me it would make more sense to move the king next to be next to the rook (if it isn't already) and then bring the rook around to the other side of the king.

As for OTB, i think its easy to choose a position by using a smartphone with lichess. Maybe lichess could have a function that sets up the study board to one of the 960 positions randomly so you wouldn't have to start a casual game online with eachother in order to get the setup.

@Sacmaniac said in #1:

If I was king, I would simplify 960 down to only 8 positions and give them all names instead of numbers.

I guess it isn't a big problem for GMs to learn opening theories for 8 positions.