Talk:Chess960

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Also called "Freestyle chess"?

Is it appropriate to add "Freestyle chess" as an alternative designation in the lead sentence? That seems to be what it is mainly being called lately. e.g. "I like Freestyle more than Classical right now" - R Praggnanandhaa [1]; or "Freestyle chess is another name for Chess960, which was coined and popularized by a 2024 chess event called the Freestyle G.O.A.T. Challenge" - chess.com [2]. Adpete (talk) 05:52, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is discussed in Talk:Chess960/Archive 3#Naming issues. An editor objected to including it among the names we list, because it is trademarked by the organizer of the Freestyle tournaments, and so it's like we are doing their marketing for them. Bruce leverett (talk) 20:54, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. The two references I provide above suggest the name is passing into wider usage though. Perhaps we should have a sentence stating it is a trademarked name. Adpete (talk) 23:28, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's a bit of a misnomer because of the Freestyle events. It's along the same lines of calling tissue paper Kleenex--it's not wrong, but it's using a brand name in lieu of it's two extant names that have been in use since the variant was first popularized.

Given the history of the naming of this variant and the names used by the major governing bodies of chess in their documentation, it is clear that Fischerandom and Chess960 are the defacto names used by the broader chess community. The names in the lede should remain consistent with that and not include potentially temporary fad names and brand names unless they reach the same prevailing usage in the chess community. Mentions of these new alternatives should stay in the "Naming" section (and elsewhere when relevant) until then. A similar consensus was reached previously with the name Chess9LX. FlamingFabrication (talk) 21:25, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Quite a bit should be removed

I've done a few edits over the last few days, mostly just rearranging. But now I'm thinking some parts should be removed, or drastically shortened:

"Creating starting positions" section should be removed, or moved to a footnote. This is not a math article.
"Castling - observation" section is mostly stating the obvious or WP:OR, and can be almost entirely removed. The rules are really simple, but these 2 sections make the rules take up about 2 screens.
In the "History" section, the two sections on Van Zuylen van Nijevelt should be moved to Displacement chess, leaving just a sentence or two here. It's a precursor to Chess960, nothing more.
The "Tournaments" section has too much detail and should be considerably shortened, with the details in the articles on the respective tournaments. e.g. the Mainz and St. Louis club sections should be brief, perhaps listing the years and the winners, but not extra details like the scores - that belongs in separate articles on those tournaments. This will become more important as more Chess960 gets played in the future, as seems likely.

Adpete (talk) 08:12, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm for streamlining the article as it waxes verbose and is unclear in a number of places.

The part in the castling section about rooks being able to castle into threatened squares seems trivial at first glance, but has some surprising implications that I believe are worthy of remaining in the article.

I think it's also worth considering moving some of this content to the wikibooks page ( https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chess_Variants/Fischer_Random_Chess ), especially for anything valuable, but unsuited to this article. FlamingFabrication (talk) 11:21, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Chess960, also known as Fischer Random"

Rewriting history is wrong guys. Are there people who don't believe that? Have they captured the entire editing of this site on any fact that is inconvenient to their program? Seems so.

Please provide links as to the naming of Chess960 (currently flagged as unsourced and requiring elaboration) or revert the article. 70.115.137.104 (talk) 21:01, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I see that there are CN and other templates in the Naming section, but why exactly are you upset? "Everyone knows" that the game used to be called Fischer Random or some variant thereof, and anyone can see from reading the chess news websites that the name "Chess960" has largely displaced the old name, for whatever reason. Is this a problem for you? Bruce leverett (talk) 21:56, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]