Erica's Diary 7: How to castle in atomic-960?

1. About this blog

This blog is now just a diary where I write whatever I want... to share my thoughts and to train my English I guess?

2. Atomic Chess and Atomic Chess 960

Atomic chess is another variant that I play. It has interesting rules but according to some good players, white has too big of an advantage. Therefore, people decided that combining atomic chess rules and chess960 rules is a good idea. So atomic960 appears. It is atomic chess with random starting positions. It can be played on pychess: https://www.pychess.org/variants/atomic960

The point of this post, is to illustrate the castling rule. The castling rule in chess960 is confusing, it is explained here: https://lichess.org/variant/chess960

So when castling with the rook closer to a-file, the king always ends up on c-file, and rook on d-file. When castling with the rook closer to h-file, the king ends up on g-file, rook on f-file. This is true for all positions. And the king can't pass through check. An easier way to understand it is to understand that the king and rook positions after kingside castling is always the same. Same for queenside castling.

Now, not knowing this rule costs me a chance to equalize, in the championship that I am about to talk about.

3. Atomic 960 World Championship

There is an atomic 960 world championship going on. And I registered. And "surprisingly", I am the last seed. My friend on lichess @TheUnknownGalReborn encouraged me to join the tournament, create studies about it and even helped me to get familiar with the variant (huge thanks).

My opponent was @AtomicRazvan. The match was scheduled after midnight for me. It's not ideal, but I still tried. I had some interesting positions in the match. But I fell victim to the castling rule.

You can find the games in this study:

Meanwhile, @azuaga, @WCIS-Ethan-House both got through Round 1. Several matches have been played in Round 2, including the first match played, where @Chijss defeated @RaviharaV 6-0. My next blog might talk a bit about the progress of this tournament.

4. Funny stuff

Finally, I will give you a chance to laugh at me.

As black, I found an exchange sacrifice for no reason, and resigned when the position seems hopeless. Or so I thought.

At least there is a lesson: Never play chess when in a bad mood. Obviously I still felt sad because of the atomic960 loss after midnight. When this happens, some rest is needed. It is called "untitling" according to my friend. As my profile says, let's just enjoy playing chess, and not let the bad mood overcome us. Seollal (lunar new year/chinese new year) is near, all East Asian people will be celebrating it. Hope everyone is doing well!