I have three arguments that I couldn’t find in previous discussions so let me share my view.

1) In chess1 castling has a clear defensive purpose. “Move your king to safety” is a rule of thumb for beginners and GMs. Centuries of chess1 games serve as a good proof that c1/g1 are indeed a safe place for the king to reside (away from the center). On the other hand, the variety of initial setups in chess960 most definitely changes the “safe-status” of c1/g1 squares and makes them a questionable destination for the king (in many setups). It doesn’t make sense to have a fixed final KR-position of castling while almost every other characteristic of the board-position has changed.

2) In chess1 castling has never had an offensive purpose. Sure, castling-long can bring the rook to activity but the king always plays a passive role. On the other hand, in chess960 we can perform a long-and-dangerous castling that moves the king from b1 to g1 (five squares away). By itself alone that may not be automatically a bad idea. The problem is that castling is not an equal opportunity move and when White castles it quite often restricts Black from castling in the same direction. My point is that castling should be fairly available to both sides and making it a powerful/offensive move doesn’t help black.

3) Everybody seems to agree that the move-king-2-squares (MK2S) rule wouldn’t make sense in cases where the king is to get closer to the center. We conclude so by applying our current chess1 skills but that could be wrong. As <Gene M> points out, the role of the center in chess960 might not be the same as in chess1. If that’s the case, I can imagine central squares to be a safe place for the king. Even in chess1 that's quite possible so let’s not rule out an option based on intuition only.

"But in chess-960, there will be practically no accumulation of experience: there are too many opening positions, and too many differences between them. And thus, the concept of the opening phase will find itself frozen, for a long time, at a childhood level." )

In practice Dvoretsky's criticism of FRC-chess960 is right. Sadly, there is "no accumulation", though accumulation is necessary to achieve the most interesting play. (General intuitive accumulation might be achievable if most players focused most of the playing on chess960, but that will not happen.)

*** IS IT TIME ? ***

-- for Hans-Walter Schmitt and the ChessTigers.de in Mainz to PRE-ANNOUNCE one of the 960 setups eleven months in advance of its annual August chess960 tournament?

ALL chess960 games that pre-announced year would use just that one non-traditional setup.

One such pre-announced year would teach us more about abstract chess than will all future years combined of yet more constantly random setup selection.

In other words, chess960 offers two GOALS....

[1] To free the players from having to study specific opening variations; but that has now been proven to lead to a low uninteresting quality of opening phase play. This was the only FRC goal that Bobby Fischer ever spoke of.

I love it. A great gift from the most important chess player in modern history.

there is a new clock out that has the 960

plus iphone apps

(In the above, entry number #145615)

I did not know the following until today:

"The Chess960 rules have officially been implemented in the FIDE rules this year, and the acceptance of the Chess960 tournaments in Mainz has been a decisive reason for FIDE to accept Chess960 in their handbook."

Thanks <Gene M> for your Dvoretsky post.

That would be a great idea. Hopefully FIDE is paying attention to it!

I'm happy to see this website fostering this amazing chess variant by creating team chess games for it.

<To conclude, I tend to agree with <YouRang>’s view that “<the castling rule> in chess960 is arbitrary and unnatural” and that MK2S rule would at least keep it fair and simple.>

Although I still think the chess960 castling rule is somewhat arbitrary, now that I've participated in a game (Chessgames Challenge: Team White vs Team Black, 2009), I can at least see some justification for it, if I look at it from this perspective: