It was introduced by former world chess champion Bobby Fischer in 1996 to reduce the emphasis on opening preparation and to encourage creativity in play.

Randomizing the main pieces had long been known as shuffle chess, but Fischer introduced new rules for the initial random setup, "preserving the dynamic nature of the game by retaining bishops of opposite colors for each player and the right to castle for both sides".

After setup, the game is played the same as classical chess in all respects, with the exception of castling from the different possible starting positions for king and rooks.

It's also possible to select a starting position using polyhedral dice, coins, or cards, but with the prevalence of personal computers and similar devices, these methods have become outdated.

[11] In conversations with Helgi Ólafsson, Bobby Fischer discussed the initiative that renamed the variant "Chess960" and remarked, "They believe my image is so bad that they have given it another name."

Challenge and the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour promoted by Magnus Carlsen and Jan Henric Buettner.

He proposed the idea of randomizing the starting positions of the main pieces to create a vast array of unique situations, eliminating the possibility of pre-game memorization or extensive opening theory.

Van Zuylen van Nijevelt's book, with its full title La Supériorité aux Échecs mise à la portée de tout le monde, et particulièrement des dames qui aiment cet amusement ("Superiority in Chess brought into the reach of all, and particularly of ladies who love that amusement"), gained significant popularity and was reprinted several times.

Its influence extended beyond the Dutch-speaking world, as it was subsequently translated into multiple languages, spreading the idea of randomizing the initial positions of chess pieces to a wider audience.

Van Zuylen van Nijevelt's innovative approach to chess not only offered a solution to the repetitive nature of traditional openings but also paved the way for the exploration of chess variants that deviate from the conventional starting position.

His quote within La Supériorité aux Échecs emphasizes the core principle behind random chess, stating, "This produces a huge number of different situations, so that no one can study them beforehand," reflecting his desire to introduce an element of unpredictability and originality into the game of chess.

One of these games is preserved in Sissa, the Netherlands' first long-standing chess journal, demonstrating an initial position with two advanced pawns on each side.

Van der Hoeven's modifications to the original concept of random chess were published in Alexandre's Encyclopédie in 1837 and later republished in Sissa by an individual known as T. Scheidius.

The aim was to promote the dissemination and popularity of the chess variant attributed to Van der Hoeven.

Originally intended as a tournament among the eight prize winners of the 1851 Philidor-organized event, logistical challenges led to invitations being extended to other chess societies.

Van ’t Kruijs emerged as the winner of the tournament, reinforcing the growing sentiment that the removal of opening theory allows true chess talent to shine.

Fischer's modification "imposes certain restrictions, arguably an improvement on the anarchy of the fully randomized game in which one player is almost certain to start at an advantage".

The result was the formulation of the rules of Fischer Random Chess in September 1993, introduced formally to the public on June 19, 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

[35][36][37][38][39] Fischer's goal was to eliminate what he considered the complete dominance of openings preparation in classical chess, replacing it with creativity and talent.

[42][43] There are games of shuffle chess recorded as early as 1852 but Fischer is generally credited with fixing the colors of bishops alongside king placement between the rooks and defining the castling process.

[68] Since 2022, they have also held tournaments for an additional variant called DFRC (Double Fischer Random Chess) or FRD (Fischer Random Double), which arrange the starting positions for White and Black separately instead of requiring them to be mirrored.

The event was won by both (There was no tiebreaker) former world (standard) chess champion Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura.

Fabiano Caruana scored 5½/9, Hikaru Nakamura 4/9, Jeffrey Xiong 3½/9, Garry Kasparov 3/9, Leinier Dominguez 2½/9 and Ray Robson 1½/9.

[79] On April 20, 2019, the first world championship in Fischer Random Chess officially recognized by FIDE was announced.

But we believe that Fischer Random is a positive innovation: It injects new energies and enthusiasm into our game, but at the same time it doesn't mean a rupture with our classical chess and its tradition.

FIDE couldn't be oblivious to that: It was time to embrace and incorporate this modality of chess.On August 19, 2022, the second world championship was announced for later in 2022, in Iceland.

This is exactly half a century after the World Chess Championship 1972 held in Iceland between Fischer and Boris Spassky.

On October 30, Hikaru Nakamura played the finals against Ian Nepomniachtchi, who had earlier knocked out Magnus Carlsen.

The solution implemented by chess engines like Shredder and Fritz is to use the letters of the columns on which the rooks began the game.

Chess18 is the subset of Chess960 in which the kings and rooks are fixed, so that castling is always orthodox, preserving more of the feel of ordinary chess.