FISCHERANDOM CHESS: Chess960 Random Position Generator

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position # random

FEN: rbnkbrqn/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RBNKBRQN w KQkq -

How to Use This Page

This page is used for generating a random position to play Fischerandom Chess. Every time you reload this page, or press the new position button, a different position will appear. Just set up a chessboard based on the diagram above, find an opponent, and have fun.

Quick Rules for Fischerandom Chess

Fischerandom Chess is played with a normal chess board and pieces. All rules of Orthodox Chess apply except as otherwise noted.
The initial configuration of the chess pieces is determined randomly for White, and the black pieces are placed equal and opposite the white pieces. The piece placement is subject to the constraints:

the king is placed somewhere between the two rooks, and
the bishops are on opposite colors.
pawns are placed on each player's second rank as in Orthodox Chess.
There are 960 such configurations.
Castling, as in Orthodox chess, is an exceptional move involving both the King and Rook. Castling is a valid move under these circumstances:

Neither King nor Rook has moved.
The King is not in check before or after castling.
All squares between the castling King's initial and final squares (including the final square), and all of the squares between the castling Rook's initial and final squares (including the final square), must be vacant except for the King and Rook.
No square through which the King moves is under enemy attack.
The movement of the King and Rook during castling should be easily understood by players of Orthodox Chess:

When castling on the h-side (White's right side), the King ends on g1 (g8), and the rook on f1 (f8), just like the O-O move in Orthodox chess.
When castling on the a-side (White's left side), the King ends on c1 (c8), and the rook on d1 (d8), just like the O-O-O move in Orthodox chess.
Sometimes the King will not need to move; sometimes the Rook will not need to move. That's OK.

The object is to checkmate the opponent's King. Have fun!

Audio file of Bobby Fischer explaining Fischerandom

fischerandom.mp3 (MP3 format)

< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 41 OF 52 · Later Kibitzing>
Jul-19-06		MrMelad: I prefer Fischerandom over chess, I like the way every game is diffrent, and the fact that people can't practice openings preparations. It's hard though, to find partners to play because my friends prefer regular chess and I can't find a single site to play live on the net (only corespondence sites). Does anyone know of a live online site?

Jul-20-06		mstover: Regarding the castling rules of Chess960, I think the rules as given are the best. A rule to move the king 2 squares toward the rook makes castling to one side pointless in many Chess960 setups - such as when the king starts on b1, c1, f1, or g1. One would virtually never castle towards the middle. Also, as far as the perceived arbitraryness of the rule - chess players often have long forgotten how arbitrary castling has always been to new players. Castling in regular chess only seems non-arbitrary because it is what you are used to. But, in reality, it is completely arbitrary in both Chess1 and Chess960. But that's ok - all the piece movement rules are arbitrary, after all. So why are the squares c1 and g1 best? g1 is a good choice because one purpose of castling is to move the king away from the center, though the corner is probably too restrictive and commital to make it a good destination. g1 seems the best choice. And c1 instead of b1 to destroy symmetry - otherwise it would essentially be chess480 as there would be a left-right symmetry of positions. For instance, take the standard position and flip the king and queen. Is this different or is it the same? If the castling rules was to move 2 squares, then it would be the same as Chess1, only mirrored left-right. But, preserve castling using c1 and g1, and now it's not the same. Because castling to g1 is generally preferable to castling f1, but now, f1 is an easier target, and the situation is not the mirror image of current chess. To me, these are good reasons why castling to c1 and g1 makes a good castling rule for chess960.

Jul-20-06		mstover: If one purpose of Chess960 is to remove opening preparation from the game, and yet it's hard to get Chess960 to be taken as seriously as Classic Chess, what about open book tournaments/matches? Ie, give everyone a chess database to consult during their games. Are their reasons (other than logistics) not to try this?

Jul-25-06		MrMelad: Hello all, for your information fischerandom play is avialible online in www.freechess.org. For a 5 minutes game just login and type "seek fr wild 5 0".

Aug-18-06		ahmadov: It is interesting that the cases of differences in number of pawns in Chess960 games are more than in usual chess. One opponent may have more pawns than the other even in super GM games in Fischerandom.

Sep-14-06		Joshka: <MrMelad> You can also play FischerRandom on the ICC.

Sep-16-06		nasmichael: ON the website http://www.chess-players.org , home of the Association of Chess Professionals, there is a list of their tournament season for 2006-07, and the group is counting, as an experimental addition for this year, the FiNET Open, which was a Chess960 (FischerRandom) tourney which was attended by several GMs and IMs. The tourney wins count as half-points in the whole tourney season ratings system for the rapid points scale. Interesting to see how that develops as the years move forward. Link: http://www.chess-players.org/eng/to...

Sep-16-06		Everett: What is the name of the version just like this where there is no castling rule?

Sep-21-06		nasmichael: Shuffle chess.

Oct-03-06		Maatalkko: Which position # of the 960 corresponds to normal chess? And what happens if the normal chess position is selected?

Oct-03-06		square dance: <what happens if the normal chess position is selected?> 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 1/2-1/2. ;-)

Oct-03-06		Maatalkko: <square dance> Lol, true. Which is why I think the normal position shouldn't be allowed in FR.

Oct-03-06		Archives: <Which position # of the 960 corresponds to normal chess? And what happens if the normal chess position is selected?> #54

Oct-03-06		chessmister: <mrmelad> It has been quite awhile since you asked about places on the internet to play fischerrandom, but I just saw your message. I have played fischerrandom on the internet chess club (ICC). It is wild variant 22 (w22). you can set time controls etc as for a regular game. Have fun.

Oct-04-06		Maatalkko: <Archives> Thanks.

Oct-17-06		ccmCACollister: "ARCHIVES" Thx for info re #54 being std Chess start. I was also wondering what the numbers are for the two positions having BNKRRQNB & same with K&Q transposed(Qc1/Kf1)? 413 is interesting; same as Std. but R's & N's are swapped NRBQKBRN .

Oct-17-06		babakova: In this game I played a guy who was rated around 2000 in normal chess. I always thought it weird how some people can play regular chess decently but are completely worthless at Fischerrandom. I played white. click for larger view 1. g3 c6 2. Nb3 d5 3. e4 e6 4. exd5 cxd5 5. Qh3 Nb6 6. Qxh7 Nc6 7. Nc3 g5 8. Qh3 Bd7 9. d3 Qd6 10. Bd2 e5 11. Qh7 Kc7 12. Nb5+ Kd8 1-0

Oct-31-06		Gene M: TO: Babakova Your chess960 game NRKN-BQRB used an initial position that has only a low amount of "knight opposition". This means the knights have good opportunity to penetrate to their rank 5 without being exchanged away by the opposing knights. The penetration threats from barely opposed knights has greater impact when the kings start on the same east-west side of the board as do the knights, which they do here in your game. Indeed in this game, your 12th move Nc3b5+ (to your rank 5) was decisive. Black should have played 11... O-O-O (which I like to notate as kc8/rbd using lowercase for Black), for an okay eval of +.8 from Fritz9. In the above we can see the beginnings of "opening principles" that are a part of pure chess, but which have long been hidden from us by our constant reuse of just the traditional "chess1" starting position. We think the days of major chess principle discoveries are long ago in the past, but we are mistaken. There is a mountain of chess we have not yet even begun to perceive, much less understand. Chess960 gives us exposure to those long unperceived principles of pure chess. As just one example, the chess1 setup happens to have more knight opposition inherent in its setup than almost all other chess960 setups. Thus grandmaster writings about chess have neglected to discuss the effects and implications of lower degrees of knight opposition. Chess960 is about a lot more than avoiding the tedium of memorizing opening variations. Gene Milener http://CastleLong.com/

May-28-07		Gene M: About the FEN shown under this web page's handy chess960 (FRC) setup generator: [1] The castling notation of KQkq is dubious for chess960. Fritz9 (and probably Fritz10) requires EHeh (the two columns the two rooks are on). [2] The full-move-pair number is missing, should be 1 (at the very end, because the next ply will be part of f-m-p 1). [3] The setup #587 (or CG#587 for ChessGames) given by the generator has an interesting origin, but its formula and numbers are used by nobody else. The Reinhard Scharnagl numbering system is the most commonly used. CG#587 is the same setup as S#029. I think the "reciprocal" system is more useful to humans, and it would be R#287 (as described in the book "Play Stronger Chess by Examining Chess960" available on Amazon.com). Fritz9 used a now-obsolete F#030 (Fritz10 switched to the S# system, I think). [3b] The numbering system is not crucial, its only purpose is to aid handy human communication, by giving a short name to each setup. R#287 & R#587 are reciprocal versions of the same abstract setup. No such human-handy numeric symmetry is provided by the S# system. [4] Here is the crucial header needed for chess960 .PGN files to be opened by Fritz9 (NOTE I had to replace each '/' with '\' to bypass this web page's attempts to replace my literal FEN string with a visible diagram): [FEN "nqnbrkbr\pppppppp\8\8\8\8\PPPPPPPP\NQNBRKBR w EHeh - 1"] MrFixItOnline.com offers chess960 "correspondence" style play (login once per day to make one move). Totally free. Gene M http://www.CastleLong.com/

May-28-07		Gene M: Tactical puzzle from a recent chess960 game. Setup was RNKB-BQRN (S#633, R#831, F#618). Black to secure an advantage with his 10th ply. The preceding plies were: 9... Bd8e7 10. Nb1c3? click for larger view Gene M http://CastleLong.com/

May-28-07		Ron: I would say 10. ... Nxe5 and white might as well let black be a pawn up for if 10. .. Nxe5 dxe5 then 11. Bc5 and white will lose more material.

Jul-09-07		notyetagm: Are there any other major forums here at cg.com which cover FischerRandom/Chess960? Thanks.

Aug-21-07		Rook in the 7th rank: Does anyone know, which number the "normal" position is?

Aug-21-07		SwitchingQuylthulg: <Rook in the 7th rank> #54, using chessgames.com numbering.

Aug-29-07		Gene M: The traditional chess1 position in chess960 is numbered differently by different systems. The most common system, by far, is Reinhard Scharnagl's. There the chess1 setup is S#518; and the "reciprocal" of that position is S#534 (RNBK-QBNR, a-h). (The term 'reciprocal' is more accurate here than is 'mirror'.) Another important system is the one used by Fritz9. There the chess1 and reciprocal positions are Fritz9#359 and Fritz9#599 respectively. I have heard that Fritz10 switched to the S# system (I do believe the Fritz9# system was an unwise choice). My "Reciprocal" system numbers the chess1 and reciprocal positions as R#362 and R#862 respectively: an difference of exactly 500. In R#, all reciprocal position pairs differ by exactly 500. - - - - - - For a Windows PC, a handy setup position Id tool (named ClpCovId.exe) is available for free download from... http://www.castlelong.com/download/... Here is an example run pasted in here (F# means Fritz9#, and try clpcovid.exe /? for more info): [C:\Personal\Chess\ClpCovId\] >> ClpCovId960.exe /ps rnbk-qbnr RNBK-QBNR , R#862 , S#534 , F#599 [C:\Personal\Chess\ClpCovId\] >> GeneM http://CastleLong.com/

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