Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
John Lewis wrote on Mon, Feb 27, 2006 01:37 AM UTC:

I find Mr. Reinhard Scharnagl's preferences interesting, and I'll address each one in turn. Remember, I am biased for the 480Chess method of castling.

a) The Chess960 castling rule is consistent, in Chess480 there are small variations, when the king is near to the borders: then he will move castling one step 'shorter'.

Consistency is in the eye of the beholder. It's true that in Chess480, the king on the 'b' or 'g' file can't make a two square leap to the near side. However I find this highly preferable to similar situations in Chess960 where the King doesn't move at all. Castling without the King moving seems rediculous to me. In Chess480 the King consistently moves and normally two spaces, unlike Chess960 where the King might travel anywhere from 0 to 5 spaces. From my perspective it's Chess960 that's inconsistent.

b) As reflected in the name, Chess960 preserves the natural asymmetry of the chess game supporting 960 different starting arrays. In Chess480 mirrored positions lead to equivalent situations (thus SMIRF proposes only such randomized positions for Chess480, where the white Kings is on white Queen's right side).

It's true that there are only 480 starting positions in Chess480 (hence the name). While you can still play the game from all 960 starting positions of Chess960 for variety, strategically there are only 480 that matter.

Having said that, the stated goal of both Chess960 and Chess480 is to open the game of Chess from it's years of studied opening play. Both games do this. I personally find the asymmetry of Chess960 to be a hinderence to introduction of the game to new players. (Which leads to your final point.)

c) After castling Chess960 positions are looking more similar to traditional chess games after the opening stage. Maybe that is the reason, why the masters will stay with Chess960.

If the masters gain some advantage from the board looking similar to traditional chess after the opening stage, then I think something has been lost from the inspiration of the game. Chess960 was intended to remove the advantage that is enjoyed by those very masters who have studied endless openings. Quoting David Wheeler 'Fischer's goal was to create a chess variant in which chess creativity and talent would be more important than memorization and analysis of opening moves.'. Liberating Chess from the book openings might also require removing from possible opening transpositions to similar openings. Chess960 is much more likely to have this happen as you've noted.

I understand why some who have invested so much time in Chess960 might view Chess480 is some kind of threat. The variant is easier to understand for novices and has many advantages over Chess960. Even hardcore 960 fans admit that the castling rules are overly complicated (they take up the majority of the rules themselves)... but none of them want to leave the rich history of games played in Chess960. I can't blame them. I'm sure players of regular chess didn't want to lose their history either.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Castling in Chess 960

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.