3D-Chess960

Chess960

Wikipedia says: “Bob­by Fischer’s goal was to elim­i­nate what he con­sid­ered the com­plete dom­i­nance of open­ings prepa­ra­tion in clas­si­cal chess, replac­ing it with cre­ativ­i­ty and tal­ent. … Fis­ch­er believed that elim­i­nat­ing mem­o­rized book moves would lev­el the play­ing field.” The game became known as Fis­ch­er Ran­dom Chess but in 1991 it was changed to Chess960 and is gain­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty (as is not­ed at chessbase.com).

“Life is Chess & Chess is Life” — It’s been said that a Chess Mas­ter will win most chess vari­ants because of hav­ing more expe­ri­ence. That is true even in life as you gain more expe­ri­ence. 960 is great! It mim­ics real life.

3D Chess960

“3D Chess960″ would be the same as Chess960 but it would be played on two boards as in “CHESS – THE NEXT GENERATION”. Plus there would be 16 open­ing moves (that does not exist in reg­u­lar 2D flat board game) and with­out the pre­de­fined pos­si­ble clas­sic openings.

'Chess960 – The Next Generation'

The above pieces have already been placed ran­dom­ly and there are still 16 pos­si­ble open­ing moves that would have nev­er hap­pen in a flat board game. This real­ly mim­ics real life! bring­ing out the best of your cre­ativ­i­ty and talent.
If you have those red/cyan 3D glass­es, then take a look at 3D-Chess960 in 3D .

How to set up Chess960

says:

The pieces are ran­dom­ly placed on the back row, with the pawns on the next row, as usu­al. There must always be:

  1. One rook to the left of the king, and one rook to the right of the king.
  2. One bish­op on light coloured square, and one bish­op on a dark coloured square.

The start­ing posi­tions are always sym­met­ri­cal (as in reg­u­lar chess). … … For casu­al play, it’s sim­ple to set up a valid posi­tion by hand.

How to Castle in Chess960

First, as explained at Wikipedia, it’s the same rules as in reg­u­lar chess:

Castling pre­req­ui­sites are the same as in stan­dard chess, namely:

  • The king and the castling rook must not have pre­vi­ous­ly moved.
  • No square from the king’s ini­tial square to its final square may be under attack by an ene­my piece.
  • All the squares between the king’s ini­tial and final squares (includ­ing the final square), and all the squares between the rook’s ini­tial and final squares (includ­ing the final square), must be vacant except for the king and rook.
It also states: A rec­om­mend­ed way to cas­tle is always move first the king to its final square, then move the rook to its final square. … also use­ful for the play­er to state “I am about to cas­tle” before castling.
Castling(3.5mins spells it out so sim­ply and visually):
Chess.com says: The bot­tom line is that the King and Rook end up on exact­ly the same squares as they would in a stan­dard game.

Chess960 — 2D or 1 flat board

So what would a game of Chess960 look like? Click on the game below and it will begin play­ing out in about 10 seconds.

Chess960 game played out

Chess960 — 31 moves — back row randomized.


01. e2-e4 e7-e5
02. b2-b3 f8-d6
03. d1-e3 g7-g6
04. e3-c4 g8-g7
05. b1-c3  O‑O
06. c3-b5 b8-c6
07. b5xd6 c7xd6
08. c4xd6 c8-c7
09. d6-b5 c7-c8
10. f2-f3 c6-b4
11. b5-c3 a7-a6
12. a2-a3 b4xc2 +
13. c1xc2 b7-b5
14. b3-b4 f7-f5
15. f1-d3 f5-f4
16. c3-d5 c8xc2
17. d3xc2 a8xd5
18. e4xd5 d7-d6
19. g1-b6 g7-e7
20. O‑O d8-f7
21. b6xa6 e7-h4
22. a6xb5 f7-g5
23. b5-e2 f8-f6
24. d2-d3 g5-f7
25. a3-a4 f6-f5
26. d3-d4 f5-h5
27. h2-h3 e5-e4
28. c2xe4 f7-g5
29. e2-f2 g5xh3 +
30. g2xh3 h5-g5 +
31. g1-h1 h4xh3 +!

The tools I used to cre­ate the above game:

In order to record a game of 3D Chess960, use the Chess Nota­tion as seen above plus add the board lev­el in-front of the nota­tion so that it would look like: Aa1 — Ba1 (if a Rook was on that square mov­ing down). The top board lev­el is A, which is above the 2nd board below it, B.

Chess960 x2

To take this game to whole new fair lev­el, take Bob­by Fischer’s goal and mul­ti­ply it by 2 and what you’ve got is Chess960 x2 or both back rows are ran­dom­ized accord­ing to the rules of Chess960. This also would require play­ing two games, so that both play­ers would play the same — ran­dom­ized back row of the oth­er per­son. This is the end result of just the first game (click game board — the game starts to plays out in 10 seconds):

20201112-2D-Chess960x2_PaulVsMartin3-Lrg2b

The above game plays out in 3 minutes.

Chess960 x2
Notice both sides are different.
Setup from a1 (Chess960) x2 for both back rows:
Black: Q B N R B K R N
White: N Q R N K R B B
       a b c d e f g h
qbnrbkrn/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/NQRNKRBB w - -
 1.d1-c3    a7-a6
 2.g2-g3    d7-d6
 3.f2-f4    c8-a7
 4.O-O-O    e8-c6
 5.h1-e4    c6xe4
 6.c3xe4    h7-h6
 7.c2-c3    a7-c6
 8.g3-g4    b8-a7
 9.g4-g5    f7 f6
10.g1-f2    O-O-O
11.a1-b3    a7xf2
12.f1xf2    a8-a7
13.e2-e3    d8-e8
14.d2-d4    e7-e5
15.g5xf6    d6-d5
16.e4-d6 +  c7xd6
17.b1-f5 +  c8-d8
18.f6-f7    h8xf7
19.f5xf7    c6-e7
20.f7-e6    d8-c7
21.f4xe5    d6xe5
22.e6xe5 +  c7-d7
23.b3-c5 +  d7-c8
24.e5-d6    b7-b6
25.c5-d3    a7-c7
26.d6-b4    g7-g5
27.d3-e5    c8-b7
28.a2-a4    a6-a5
29.b4-b5    e7-c8
30.b5xd5 +  b7-b8
31.f2-f7    e8-e7
32.f7-f6    e7-h7
33.e5-c6 +  b7xc6
34.f6xc6    b8-a8
35.c6xb6 +  a8-a7
36.d5xa5 ++

Now, take the above and play a game of “3D Chess960 x2″ and you’ve got a very excit­ing fair game with end­less fair pos­si­bil­i­ties so that each game will be very new.

If you have any com­ments, you could post them at my Flickr account or at my YouTube account.