ThinkingSkull.com

Wired.com news has an interesting tidbit on something I’ve always enjoyed about the game of chess: creativity instead of memorization. Sure, you can read every chess book ever written to see how all the Grand Masters won their in their day, but what if the board was a bit more random?

Bobby Fischer drove many so-called “grand masters” batty with his short-goal, no-grand-plan chess strategies. His variant form, Chess960 (or “Fischer Random Chess”), works as follows: “Pawns begin where they always do. However, the pieces behind them on the white side are arranged at random, with the proviso that bishops must end up on opposite colors, and the king dwell somewhere between the two rooks. The black pieces are lined up to mirror the white. ” In other words, there are 960 beginning board variations before play begins and book knowledge is useless.

While Fischer himself has become somewhat more eccentric, the variation he invented is finally picking up steam and breathing new life into the same ol’ game.