Chess960

Chess960
7	7
6	6
5	5
4	4
3	3
2	2
1	1
Years active	Since June 19, 1996
Genres	Board game; Chess variant;
Players	2
Setup time	≈1 min + 1 min to determine starting position
Playing time	Casual games: 10–60 min; Tournament games: from 10 min (fast chess) to 6 hours
Chance	Pieces are randomized
Skills	Strategy, tactics
Synonyms	Fischer Random Chess

Chess960, also known as Fischer Random Chess, is a chess variant that randomizes the starting position of the pieces on the back rank. It was introduced by former world chess champion Bobby Fischer in 1996 to reduce the emphasis on opening preparation and to encourage creativity in play. Chess960 uses the same board and pieces as classical chess, but the starting position of the pieces on the players' home ranks is randomized, following certain rules. The random setup makes gaining an advantage through the memorization of openings unfeasible. Players instead must rely on their skill and creativity.

Randomizing the main pieces had long been known as shuffle chess, but Fischer introduced new rules for the initial random setup, "preserving the dynamic nature of the game by retaining bishops of opposite colors for each player and the right to castle for both sides". The result is 960 distinct possible starting positions.

In 2008, FIDE added Chess960 to an appendix of the Laws of Chess. The first world championship officially sanctioned by FIDE, the FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2019, brought additional prominence to the variant. It was won by Wesley So. In 2022, Hikaru Nakamura won the second edition. In 2026, Magnus Carlsen became the new champion.