FROM A NOVICE PLAYER

Being a novice player for 45+ years, because other things in my life were more important then hour upon hour of endless study of chess openings and endings, I never got really good at playing traditional chess. Even though I worked at the UNITED STATES CHESS FEDERATION a few years and was surrounded by good and even GREAT players the study of chess was of secondary importance. I did learn to play better by listening to the employees speak about taticts and strategies, and what to, and not to do. It would be hard not to around those players.

Fischers thoughts are that the majority of modern chess matches are "prearranged". That is to say that player has chosen to use "SELECTED" openings in each of the games he will play as WHITE and knows what the expected lines of defense are from the other players past performances and how to avoid them. THUS he has largely already played the game.

ON THE OTHER HAND, The BLACK player has also studied the opponents past performances, know what to expect as openings in the match, and attempts to study and discover a way to defeat it, and win the game. THIS is why, many games in a grandmaster tournament are DRAWS, they know each other too well to have a "new" game.
NOW, along comes FISCHER RANDOM CHESS.

In this variation of "SHUFFLE CHESS" he has changed a few things to improve its "playability". The play of the game stays the same, with the same objective "checkmate" but it starts out different, so memorization of opening "lines" is useless and a players knowledge of sound strategies and tactics will prove to make him the victor.
HOW THE PIECE SHUFFLE WORKS
Rules
The game is played as orthodox chess, but with the following differences:
A
The position of the pieces in the opening setup is chosen randomly by a computer, from the setups, fulfilling the following conditions:
B
Castling is possible, and done in the following way.
Number of different opening positions

As a result, there are 960 legal starting positions. The calculation of this is as follows: First, put down the two bishops There are 16 different ways for one bishop to be on a white square and the other bishop to be on a black square. That leaves six empty squares. Now, put down the king in between the two rooks. There are 20 different ways for a king and two rooks to occupy six possible squares with the king in between. That leaves three squares for the two knights and the queen There are three possible ways to put those pieces down. Thus, there are 16 x 20 x 3 or 960 possible legal starting positions in Fischer Random Chess.
for a list in FEN notation of all 960 positions. click here
Creating a random opening position

You can create a random opening position with the help of one normal (six-sided) die. All pawns are first placed on their usual positions. With help of the following procedure, all other white pieces are placed. Then, the black pieces are placed mirrorwise (as described above.)
Throw. Use the following table.
1 Put a bishop on a1
2 Put a bishop on c1
3 Put a bishop on e1
4 Put a bishop on g1
5 invalid... Throw again on this table.
6 invalid... Throw again on this table.
Throw again, and use the following table.
1 Put a bishop on b1
2 Put a bishop on d1
3 Put a bishop on f1
4 Put a bishop on h1
5 invalid...5 Throw again on this table.
6 invalid...6 Throw again on this table.
Throw again, now using the following table.
1 Put the queen on the first empty square on the first row.
2 Put the queen on the second empty square on the first row.
3 Put the queen on the third empty square on the first row.
4 Put the queen on the fourth empty square on the first row.
5 Put the queen on the fifth empty square on the first row.
6 Put the queen on the sixth empty square on the first row.
Throw again, now using the following table.
1 Put a knight on the first empty square on the first row.
2 Put a knight on the second empty square on the first row.
3 Put a knight on the third empty square on the first row.
4 Put a knight on the fourth empty square on the first row.
5 Put a knight on the fifth empty square on the first row.
6 invalid...Throw again on this table.
Throw again, now using the following table.
1 Put a knight on the first empty square on the first row.
2 Put a knight on the second empty square on the first row.
3 Put a knight on the third empty square on the first row.
4 Put a knight on the fourth empty square on the first row.
5 invalid...Throw again on this table.
6 invalid...Throw again on this table.


Finally

Is put a rook on the first empty square on the first row, the king on the second empty square on the first row, and the other rook on the third empty square on the first row.
This procedure creates any of the possible 960 opening setups with equal chance, hence is a good alternative for making the opening setup by computer. On the average, you must make 6.7 die rolls. (More complicated tables, which would yield less die rolls are possible. )

Another method

Is to to roll a position with a die, made by Michael Staiff. However, this method is not mathematically sound: some positions have more chance to be chosen as others. On the other hand, it decreases the probability that a knight starts in a corner, which may be a good thing.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED IS:

Opening lines are useless as there are now 960 "new" opening setup positions and only the players knowledge of sound movements will have him prevail. (It will be a while before these will be "memorized".)

*****this section is not an endorcement of BOBBY FISCHER, just a description of an interesting chess variant*****
READY TO SEE HOW A PLAYED GAME LOOKS ?
Follow one of the links below. They will take you to a java viewer where you can "step" through a FISCHER RANDOM CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT game.
(java must be enabled to view them)
click here to see a game
click here to see another



PLAY A GAME HERE (choose "throne of choas" on the menu )
use your "back" button to return to main index