Talk:Chess960

Similar variants should be removed or changed

Most of the text in the "Similar variants" section contains information about variants which aren't notable. For example, Chess18 is not played on a wide scale nor is it an official variant. The only source given is one unofficial tournament played by some chess streamers. This is not a widely played or notable variant. It is just a subset of Chess960 starting positions.

Also, the table is a bit misleading as it shows the number of positions possible in each variant if the sides aren't mirrored. However, Fischer Random requires that the sides are mirrored. Theferocious1 (talk) 09:31, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

You make a good point about the number of positions for an unmirrored Fischer Random board... such positions are by definition impossible. I will put an "n/a" in that cell, with perhaps a footnote to explain. Regarding Chess18, I see no harm in the content... it is indeed very obscure, but it is still a thing and I personally found it of interest. Marcus Markup (talk) 10:46, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Is there any standard for what makes a variant "official" enough to be included? I could come up with tons of variants that surely shouldn't be included. For example, what about the subset of chess960 positions where the king always starts on the e-file to allow for castling where the king always moves two squares to the left (long-castling) or right(short-castling)? There are 204 such positions. Should Chess204 be included as a similar variant? Personally, I don't think that would be appropriate as it is not notable or played. I'd argue that Chess18 is a similar case. Theferocious1 (talk) 20:53, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Updating the Theory section

We have made an analysis of all Chess960 starting positions at https://github.com/stumpc5/chess960/ .

1. We also computed advantages for white with Stockfish 16 by letting it play 20k games for each starting positions. The results differ from previously computed data: https://github.com/stumpc5/chess960/blob/main/analysis_overview.md#sorted-by-average-points-for-white

2. Our main goal was to provide openings for each starting position. We were able to recover well-known openings for classical chess, and provide novel openings for all variants.

Details are in the github repo, and I'd be happy if someone updates the "Theory" section accordingly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by The tree stump (talk • contribs) 06:28, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 29 October 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: MOVED to Chess960. There is a consensus that Chess960/Chess 960 has become the COMMONNAME in recent years. There is slightly more support for the unspaced version of that title. (closed by non-admin page mover) Toadspike [Talk] 16:38, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

---

Fischer random chess → Chess 960 – "Chess 960" is the WP:COMMONNAME for this chess variant, based on press coverage (newspapers.com articles found from the last 20 years: 82 mentioning "Chess 960" and 65 mentioning Fischer Random Chess, many mentioning both), major chess sites including chess.com and lichess.org, recent books, and chess organizations. Other Wikipedias have also started to move away from "Fischer" in the title with 20 out of 39 using "960" in the title instead. While Fischer Random Chess is still often used as a term, it is no longer the most common name. In recent years, "Fischer Random Chess" is typically mentioned only once in reliable sources, often parenthetically or as a secondary term, with "Chess 960" used for the remainder of the article, book, etc. While the article does discuss several other variants, the focus of the article is Chess 960 and it makes sense to keep the article history connected to Chess 960 as a topic. As to "Chess 960" vs. "Chess960", including the space seems to be more frequent based on newspapers.com and Google searches, but both are often used. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 00:37, 29 October 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Reading Beans, Duke of Rivia 06:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)— Relisting. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:26, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

This question has been discussed here before, most recently in #Move of page (Fischer Random Chess or Chess960).

Counting sightings in newspapers.com and coming up with 82 versus 65 doesn't get me excited about making an article name change. 82 versus 65 is not a large edge, and WP:COMMONNAME refers to "a significant majority of independent, reliable, English-language sources". I do not oppose this move, because I am not familiar with the literature, but the rationale as stated is unconvincing. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:08, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

That discussion is from five years ago and usage has shifted further. My primary concern is following WP:COMMONNAME.

There aren't a lot of books focused on the variant, but the three available on Amazon right now (oldest to newest):

• Milener, Gene (2006-01-01). Play Stronger Chess by Examining Chess960: Usable Strategies of Fischer Random Chess Discovered.
• Briffoz, Eric (2018-06-10). Adventures in Chess960: Fischer Random Chess - Volume 1.
• Gordon, Ray Charles (2019-03-24). 960 Stems: A Complete Guide To Chess 960 Openings.

The subtitles on the first two books are in smaller print.

FIDE rules? Chess960. Want to play a game on chess.com or lichess.org? It's listed as Chess 960 and Chess960, respectively. Common usage has also shifted along with organizations and companies. For example, There are 236 posts with "Chess 960" or "Chess960" in the title on Reddit's /r/chess forum from the last 16 years, and 118 posts with "Fischer Random", "Fischerrandom", or "Fischerandom" in the title. But if you only look at posts from the last year, it's 37 to 10. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 06:56, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Calling the game "Chess 960" has become common in reliable sources... proponents of referring to it as such sometimes admit it's because they simply don't want to use the "F" word. I think the scrubbing from the history books of the mention of the name of any person who might done or said some dastardly things in his day is misguided and populist and as the editor of an encyclopedia and not USA Today, I cannot support the trend. Marcus Markup (talk) 01:12, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Exactly which Wikipedia policy or guideline are you citing here? WP:COMMONNAME is policy. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 07:01, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

It is true that there are some people who refer to it as "Chess 960" because they don't want to use the "F" word. However, this is not the majority consensus, so supporting the name change does not mean supporting those who want to scrub the history books. Most users of "Chess 960" are using it because it's most known in the community, and secondly because it's shorter to say.

How the game is listed on chess.com and lichess.org is a stronger argument than it was made out to be. These platforms represent the vast majority of online players, and thereby inadvertantly define how people refer to different games. When you search "Fischer random" on chess.com's variants page, there's no results. "Chess 960" is all there is. This is reflected anecdotally, where at my chess clubs in Canada and Denmark, new variants players frequently haven't even heard the name "Fischer random." I don't know anyone who would be against this article name change. Plettj (talk) 22:00, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 15:34, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Chess has been notified of this discussion. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:27, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

• Slight Oppose per FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2019 and FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2022 and their page sources, plus some of the book titles. The use of the full name by FIDE seems determinative. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:13, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

  @Randy Kryn: This article is about the chess variant, not those tournaments. FIDE calls the chess variant "Chess960" in the FIDE handbook and not "Fischer random chess", just as chess.com, lichess.org, and the books listed above all do. FIDE didn't even hold the planned 2024 championship. Most if not all events since 2022 have called it Chess 960 or Chess 9LX. Regards. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 18:09, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks. Finding it odd that the 2023 FIDE rule book would call the variant one thing although when they organized previous tournaments, especially the 2022 one, they called it another. As SnowFire says below, a little more time for common name to apply. I added 'Slight' to my oppose per your response. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:35, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

  I suspect they were trying to differentiate the event from the Mainz Chess 960 event and other tournaments with a longer history. It's been 960 in the FIDE handbook for years. The USCF handbook also calls it "Chess-960" although it's only mentioned in passing. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 01:14, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per previous discussion and Randy Kryn. As mentioned before, FIDE itself called their tournaments "Fischer Random". The fact it was called Chess960 is their handbook speaks much less loudly than how the tournaments were named. That said, I do agree that chess.com and Lichess using Chess960 is relevant, and it's possible that this should move in the future if that continues, but probably not yet. SnowFire (talk) 23:23, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

• Comment This recent news article from WSJ (summary to bypass paywall) refers to it solely as Fischer random. Versions like "Freestyle chess", "Chess960", "9LX" etc. all seem to be different brandings/marketing gimmicks, and it seems like everyone wants to call it something different. Those using one term tend to not mention the others. However, the aforementioned news article was about a "Freestyle chess" match, but it only mentions Freestyle as the name of the event and not the variant. Chess960 and Fischer random seem to be almost equally prevalent in sources, with most mentioning both. In this chess.com article announcing the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge, it is called "the first ever classical Fischer-Random super-tournament" in the lead; Chess960 is used later in the article, before mentioning the FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2022 at the end. The name given by its creator was Fischerandom chess; FIDE states "(they) have preferred to honor Fischer for his rule changes to the older version of Shuffle Chess". Google Trends for the last five years indicates that the search term "Fischer chess" is by far the most popular search term, while between "Fischer random" and "Chess960", the former is slightly more popular on average. 9ninety (talk) 05:26, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

  Also interesting to note that interest in these search terms peaked during the 2022 Fischer Random World Championship, when both "Fischer chess" and "Fischer random" were 6-12 times more popular than "Chess960". Including "Freestyle chess" in the search terms shows us that the World Championship was overall more popular than the Freestyle chess event, and that "Freestyle chess" did not catch on as a search term, but has seen a recent revival in light of the new match, and is currently more popular than "Fischer random" and "Chess960", but still less than "Fischer chess". 9ninety (talk) 05:56, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

  @9ninety: "Fischer chess" is huge because people are "Searching for Bobby Fischer"—literally, it's a search for Bobby Fischer, the chess player. Your Google Trends search is missing the term "Chess 960" which is slightly more common than "Chess960" as a single word. If you view this revised Google Trends for the last year and add up the two summary columns for Chess 960, you'll see it's consistent with the other data I presented above showing that Chess 960 is the more common name. Even if you use the five year chart with the major spike during the FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2022, you can download the CSV to add up the columns: "Chess 960" plus "Chess960" adds up to 959 units of interest and all three versions of "Fischer random" only total to 510 over the last five years. Freestyle and Chess 9LX are branded names for the variant and are mostly used for specific events. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 06:42, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

  You're right; it somehow didn't cross my mind that "Fischer chess" might be a search for Fischer himself. 9ninety (talk) 07:43, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

• Move to Chess960 (no space)– seems to be the most common name. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 16:37, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
• Support - the FIDE rules are for chess960 [1] — Wassermaus (talk) 19:33, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Chess960 is the name most commonly used. Frost 15:21, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Castling rules inaccuracy

In Observations, it states: "In standard chess, a rook can castle out of and through check but cannot castle into check because that would mean its king passes through check since, when castling, a king always passes its castling rook's destination square." This is incorrect and inconsistent with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#Castling but I'm very new and busy at work, so not sure what I would update it to. Just thought I'd bring it up! AnnoyingScience (talk) 12:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

new edits after the move to "Chess960"

Daniel Quinlan seems to deem my edits as "controversial"

I edited the first paragraph a bit

is stating that it is originally known as Fischer Random Chess controversial? because, in my opinion, that is a fact, and no mentions of both the name Chess960 and Fischer Random Chess were moved around or removed--I just rephrased the first part to add that it is also originally known as Fischer Random Chess--that's all regarding "controversy"

have I misunderstood something? is there anything that I missed? what are other people's opinions on this?

I'm just trying to understand how it's still "controversial", despite of the changes I made not making any change on the viewpoint reflected in the article KevinPaoloZero (talk) 21:38, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Two different editors have reverted your changes and I'm not the person that described them as "controversial". I would say, however, that they were going against the consensus to change the article title. Also, as explained in Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, it's time to discuss.

Regarding "originally known", the variant is still known by both names although the Chess960 name is more common now. The way the lead sentence is phrased right now seems accurate: it starts with the current title and notes that the variant is "also known as Fischer Random Chess". Using "also known as" is a common phrasing for articles on a topic where the subject is known by more than one name (e.g., Cotton candy, Glasses, Coriander, and Egyptian Ratscrew). For consistency, the article should generally use the common name too, which it does, except for several places where it wouldn't make sense or it's part of a proper name such as the name of the FIDE tournament.

Also, I just rephrased the first part to add that it is also originally known as Fischer Random Chess--that's all regarding "controversy" does not seem like an accurate summary of those edits. It looks like the edits were restoring the old version of the article based on the previous title with several additional changes.

If you have any specific concerns at this point, perhaps you could enumerate them? Daniel Quinlan (talk) 22:28, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

@Daniel Quinlan about the first thing you said here, yeah, I misread, sorry

I know very well that the variant is known by both names and that Chess960 seems to be more common now

1. I would like to make it clear once again that my intention is to not go against the consensus--if some of my prior edits haven't reflected that it's clearly because I forgot something and it's definitely fixed in my current edit

all mentions of both names are intact, have not been moved or removed

"also known as" to "also originally known as" is the closest thing I have done, all of this elaborated further in my second point

2. Ches960 is the common name but it's also originally known as Fischer random chess (and the name is still used, which is already strongly implied here just like how it is the original name, even in the template where it's shown as a synonym, even in the rest of the article), so there is no need to tell me that

the intended meaning, obviously, is that it's also known as Fischer random chess, and that Fischer random chess is also the original name (the original being fischer random chess is a fact and is not subject to controversy, rather, the controversy is how it should be called in the current days)

3. and, yes, I believe my summary of those edits is accurate

the problem with what you're saying here is that you're deeming it inaccurate just because of you seeing only one part

because what you're citing here from me is just my clarification of one specific point about "controversy"

it isn't my full description of all of my edits

you're not considering the other parts in my prior edits (of which my current edit is clearly based on) that inform about other changes in my edits--at some point I wrote far more than "cleaning up" because of what you said earlier

in that specific case I just needed to elaborate on one part, and you're deeming that one part like if it is the full explanation of all of my edits and not clarification to deliver a point KevinPaoloZero (talk) 04:06, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Capitalization question: "Fischer Random Chess" vs. "Fischer random chess"

@Neo Purgatorio: I downloaded every unique link used in the article (citations and external links) and extracted how often either version of the name was used from the web-readable articles. The sources seem to be very consistent about using the capitalized version, "Fischer Random Chess". (Just to be clear given the recent discussion about the article name, there were 598 total uses of "Chess960" or "Chess 960" in the same text so Chess960 is still clearly the WP:COMMONNAME.)

Count	Variation
139	Fischer Random Chess
19	Fischerandom Chess
4	Fischer random chess
4	Fischer Random chess
3	Fischerrandom chess
2	Fischerrandom Chess
2	Fischerandom chess
1	FischerRandomChess

In case those numbers were being biased by the article title, I did the same extraction with only the final mention in each link:

Count	Variation
25	Fischer Random Chess
2	Fischerandom Chess
1	Fischerrandom chess
1	Fischerrandom Chess
1	Fischer Random chess

It seems like the article should be using "Fischer Random Chess" when that's the context. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:46, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Feel free to revert my edit then if that's the case. I was going off of links of it on other articles—every time I've seen it, it's been left uncapitalised. Neo Purgatorio (pester!) 02:56, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

(see Bobby Fischer, Fischer random chess numbering scheme, World Chess960 Championship, Chess variant, etc, etc) Neo Purgatorio (pester!) 03:00, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I went ahead with the change. I think it's likely those articles need to be updated. Fischer random chess numbering scheme is particularly lacking sources (that may or may not still be the appropriate name, we'd need to see what reliable sources say). Daniel Quinlan (talk) 21:18, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Fischer named his variant "Fischerandom". (I.e. one "r".) --IHTS (talk) 03:41, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

I thought I had included that in my matching, but I missed it, thanks. I updated the above tables to include the one "r" matches. It still seems like "Fischer Random Chess" is the most common rendering by far. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 06:00, 8 December 2024 (UTC)