freestyle chess
- Also called:
- Fischer Random Chess or Chess960
- Related Topics:
- chess
What is freestyle chess?
How does castling work in freestyle chess?
Why was freestyle chess created?
Who were some key figures in the development of freestyle chess?
When was freestyle chess publicly introduced?
freestyle chess, variation of chess in which the pieces on the first and eighth rank are placed randomly with two conditions.
- There must be one light-square bishop and one dark-square bishop.
- The king must be placed between the two rooks.
Moves and principles
The pawns are placed in their usual positions on the second and seventh ranks. As in regular, or classical, chess, the black pieces are set up to mirror the white pieces; that is, if the white king is placed on f1, the black king is placed on f8. Pieces move as in regular chess, with the difference being that when the king castles kingside (toward the h file) or queenside (toward the a file), the king and rook end up in the same position as in regular chess, regardless of the squares from which they started.
In freestyle chess there are 960 possible opening positions (this variant is sometimes called Chess960) and thus too many for players to memorize openings for every position. Opening principles are nevertheless the same in that it is desirable to control the center, develop pieces, and protect the king. Some opening positions are better than others. For example, if a bishop is in the corner, it can quickly control the long diagonal stretching to the other corner. If a knight is in the corner, it is at a disadvantage being farther from the center than normally.
History
The development of chess variants has been driven by dissatisfaction with the routine of opening moves. In 1792 Dutch player Philip Julius van Zuylen van Nijevelt proposed a version of random chess, in which players would agree to a different arrangement of pieces. In the 20th century Ukrainian player David Bronstein and Hungarian American player Pal Benko championed a variant called placement chess, in which White places a piece and then Black, with the only restriction that there must be bishops on opposite-color squares.
After American grandmaster and former world champion Bobby Fischer returned to chess in 1992, 17 years after he had refused to play against Soviet challenger Anatoly Karpov for the championship, he, too, felt that chess was overly reliant on rote memorization of openings and that introducing a random element would allow players to more fully exercise their imagination and talent. He was then living in Hungary and developed the rules of what initially was called Fischer random chess with Hungarian-born American chess champion Susan Polgar and some consultation with Benko. Freestyle chess was publicly introduced in Buenos Aires in June 1996.
“There’s more of a childish joy of just playing chess rather than being worried about openings, rating points, and all of those things that are important but don’t necessarily equate [to] joy.”—former world champion and top-rated chess player Magnus Carlsen after winning the Paris Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, April 2025
Freestyle chess quickly grew in popularity and attracted the attention of the world’s top players. In 2008 chess’s international governing body, the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), added Chess960 to the official Laws of Chess rulebook, the only chess variant to achieve official status. The first FIDE Fischer Random Chess Championship was won by American Wesley So in 2019. In 2024 former world champion Magnus Carlsen picked seven top players to compete against him in the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge. (The acronym G.O.A.T. stands for “Greatest of All Time,” referring to Carlsen having the highest chess rating ever; Carlsen won the tournament.) The tournament’s popularity led to a Freestyle Chess Grand Slam tour in 2025, with 26 of the world’s top players competing at events held globally.