Some ideas about training in Chess 960

A little about myself. I started playing chess in my childhood, when I was 6 years old. At some point I wanted to become professional chess player, entered special chess school and played in kids chess competitions. I reached the level of candidate master when i was 13, but then I started studying seriously, entered University and my scope of attention changed. I 've never given up chess completely though. I always played online and took part in tempo tournaments, whenever I could. At the same time, I understand that despite the fact that i love the game, i never achieved anything serious and at some point I throw ambitions away. Chess became just a good hobby for me and for a long time its a pleasure to spend an evening before chess board. It's intellectual pleasure to see beautiful games and splendid combinations.

And then i met Chess 960 or Fisher chess. I started playing it long time ago, i think at Chess21.com. For me it was like a whole new world, the rules of chess, but no restrictions, no opening theory - but the ability to play certain positions and ideas. I sincerely think that's the future of chess. Chess 960 woked me up, I suddenly dicided to study chess further and improve, to organize events in Chess 960, online and offline and to develop a working method how to improve in this variation of chess.

Since Chess 960 are relatively new, nobody knows how to train it or how to improve your game. And I want to share some ideas about it - how to improve in Chess 960.

1. Openings. Since there are no definite starting position, but 960 starting positions instead, it makes no sense to study openings theory. But it makes sense to study opening PRINCIPLES and IDEAS. Principles are still the same – the fastest development of pieces on good squares, and the creation of the balanced position to play the middle game. It makes sense to study how to transform position to comfort and harmonic one. How to do it? For me the answer is opening puzzles. Sucrificing pawn for initiative (the idea, that can be implemented anywhere), the ideas about how pieces can be set in the way to communicate well. Such kind of puzzles is possible to find even on lichess, but there are other special resources.
2. Middle game. To study positional play is very important. At this part of the game position has already formed. And we can implement any knowledge about middle game. Personally i advice to read Nimsovitsch My System and My System on Practice, Mark Dvoretsky books about positional play and strategic decisions. I found one beautiful way to train – just to read about some ideas and then to keep attention on this idea during blitz game and try to implement it. I just keep our attention on some idea and that’s allow to see it and use it.
3. Combinations and Calculations. Most of the games are decided by tactical blows. That's why, the most necessary thing is to study tactics. My personal advice is to study simple ones - double attack, forks, basic sacrifices to open a king to mate. Then - more complex things. It makes sense to solve tactics every day. I use chesstempo.com or lichess.org to do it.

Then - just to train calculation. You can train it by yourself. Just get complex position and look on it for some time. Then try to choose several most likely to happen moves. Then to choose the best one. And then to see a game. It's possible to use “play like grandmaster” things, it's good for this goals.

4. Endgame. It's always worth to study endgame. But again I vote for studying principles, if you understand them - they will stay with you forever and will serve many times. To study simple techniques – like square rule in pawn endgame. It will save you a lot of time and games – you don’t need to calculate to use it.

Other thoughts about training in Chess 960. You need ideas, not variations. Collect ideas! That’s why to solve puzzles is a very good idea, to read books about strategic techniques is also good. Solve chess problems. Its better to do it without moving pieces, just calculating. I think it’s very good training, that includes everything.

I will write further and develop every topic. I created a team to study Chess 960, to improve skills and to play team Chess 960 events - https://lichess.org/team/960fans. Everyone is welcomed to participate. I think Chess 960 opened Chess to everyone. Because they make the threshold of entrance is much lower.