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A comment on Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship. Parent comment

Re:Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Champi... by OJFord on Monday February 16, 2026 @07:20AM (#47034123)
> The rise of freestyle chess could viably see players extending their dominance for much longer, because there's currently believed to be no realistic way to do impactful opening prep in that game.

For those out of the know like me, the tldr seems to be that it shuffles the positions in the first rank - symmetrically with your opponent, but not the usual rook/knight/bishop/royal both sides. So you can't study openings well because you don't even know the starting position.

https://www.freestyle-chess.com/fc-players-club-rules/

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Re:Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Champi... by avadodin on Monday February 16, 2026 @05:42PM (#47041350)
It goes to show my expertise in chess that I watched a whole encounter and it looked exactly the same as regular chess with castling and all.

I don't know if I would call the positions symmetrical, though, they seem mirrored(I just checked and regular chess is mirrored as well).

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Re:Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Champi... by OJFord on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @05:01AM (#47045600)
I've only had the one coffee, but surely mirroring is symmetry in the plane of the mirror? Anyway, yes, that's what I meant - you have the same order each, so neither disadvantaged, it's just not the usual order.
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