Sunday, April 21, 2019

Fischer Random Chess

Very interesting that The World Fischer Random Chess Championship is now officially recognized by FIDE. My experience with this in the past was that the top players avoided it because it undermines all their standard opening preparation. Wonderful that it is now recognised as the way forward by FIDE and the world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen.

Source: Chess.com Announces FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship

It is also known as Chess960. Chess960 introduces restrictions on the randomization, "preserving the dynamic nature of the game by retaining bishops of opposite colours for each player and the right to castle for both sides".The result is 960 unique possible starting positions. Two of the possible 960 starting positions are shown below.
I don't know when, but I think we are approaching that [the end of chess] very rapidly. I think we need a change in the rules of chess. For example, I think it would be a good idea to shuffle the first row of the pieces by computer ... and this way you will get rid of all the theory. One reason that computers are strong in chess is that they have access to enormous theory [...] I think if you can turn off the computer's book, which I've done when I've played the computer, they are still rather weak, at least at the opening part of the game, so I think this would be a good improvement, and also just for humans. It is much better, I think, because chess is becoming more and more simply memorization, because the power of memorization is so tremendous in chess now. Theory is so advanced, it used to be theory to maybe 10 or 15 moves, 18 moves; now, theory is going to 30 moves, 40 moves. I think I saw one game in Informator, the Yugoslav chess publication, where they give an N [theoretical novelty] to a new move, and I recall this new move was around move 50. [...] I think it is true, we are coming to the end of the history of chess with the present rules, but I don't say we have to do away with the present rules. I mean, people can still play, but I think it's time for those who want to start playing on new rules that I think are better."
— Fischer (September 1, 1992)

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