Why is Chess960 called 960?

The name Fischer Random Chess soon turned into Fischerrandom, and after he had introduced this variant into the Mainz Chess Classic in 1991 organiser Hans-Walter Schmitt changed it to Chess960, which reflects the number of different starting positions that are possible in the game.

What is the variant of chess invented by Bobby Fischer called?

Fischer Random Chess
Fischer Random Chess (also called Chess960, Chess 960, Fischerandom chess, FR chess, or FullChess) is a chess variant created by Grandmaster Bobby Fischer (the World Champion of chess from 1972 until 1975).

What are the starting positions in Chess960?

One rook to the left of the king, and one rook to the right of the king. One bishop on light coloured square, and one bishop on a dark coloured square. The starting positions are always symmetrical (as in regular chess).

What does the Fen stand for in Chess960?

The FEN for the classical starting position (#518 in chess960) is: The string describes the board top down from white’s perspective, and row by row shows black pieces (lower case letters), sets of empty squares (numbers), and white pieces (upper case letters). The “KQkq” part of the FEN indicates who has castling rights and in which directions.

Is the castling always the same in Chess960?

Castling in chess960 is very easy: No matter the starting position, the king and rook always go to the same final squares as in regular chess. In other words, the castling destinations (either queenside or kingside) are identical to the castling destinations in standard chess.

Is there a backwards compatible way to play Chess960?

Within an actual game of chess960, it is possible to obtain positions where FEN notation would be ambiguous about which rook is the castling rook (see the example here ). One solution is to use X-FEN, which is backwards compatible with FEN, although there is also the conceptually simpler Shredder-FEN approach (not backwards compatible with FEN).