I’m fairly new to USCF. are there any chess 960 rated tournament under USCF currently? Standard chess is more or less of a memory test of opening theories to get an edge of your opponent.
A few organizers might run a Chess 960 event, but they are not ratable.
I’m more or less at Mr. Li’s level (<2000). At our level games are far more likely to be decided by blundering a piece than making an inaccuracy on move 27 of the Ruy Lopez. Besides, most of our opponents would have no idea what to do if we deviated from their prepared lines.
Alex Relyea
I think the Delegates a few years ago recommended against having Chess960 as part of the current US Chess ratings.
We could set up a separate ratings system for Chess960, I believe the EB now has the authority to do that, but there doesn’t seem to be much interest in it from organizers or players. The issue comes up maybe once or twice a year here.
Someone (most likely the ratings committee) would need to decide if/how US Chess ratings (and possibly FIDE ratings) could be used to initialize Chess960 ratings.
A separate question is what time controls Chess960 would be valid under, it would seem overkill to have US Chess set up 3 separate Chess960 ratings systems (regular, quick and blitz).
I had a professor who use to say “If something is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well.”
I think it would be great to have a Chess960 tournament. I’d be curious about when you find out the starting position. Do you get like 10 mins to prep beforehand, or they set it up and then immediately start your clock. I also agree that one rating would be good to start with, then you could add in blitz/quick if it is popular enough.
My club’s annual chess960 night (not rated of course) is G/80;d5 with maybe a minute of prep time. It was looked at as a nice change the first few times but now there is a significant minority of players that want to drop it. Personally I like it but that may be due to my book prep not being the greatest anyway (which may be why my rating is 139 points below my peak).
I don’t think Chess960 / Fischer Random ever took off much. Of course, you can always get a game online from one of the various chess servers. I don’t know how popular the variant is, so I don’t know if you can pick up a quick game, or have to spend time waiting for an opponent.