Fusion so far: Rapid and Freestyle Chess

Fusion: Our innovative event blending Rapid and Freestyle Chess

Written by Rock Yu

“Fusion” is the name we have given to our series of seven Friday evening events comprising five games of FIDE rapid and a single game of Freestyle (AKA Fischer random/960). On Friday 24th April, we ran our second iteration of the year at our Potters Bar venue just off the M25.

The “normal” FIDE rapid element of the first Fusion event, on Friday February 13th (AlphaChess isn’t superstitious), was won by Beni Sisupalan, who was delayed by traffic but won the four games that followed his subsequent first-round bye. He took home first prize cash and the first of the seven trophies. Congratulations to Beni!

Beni was third seed for Fusion II and performed respectably but it was CM Lion Lebedev who won the trophy and first prize cash this time in the FIDE rapid. Well done to Lion!

After the FIDE rapid, there was a single game of Freestyle Chess, which is a variant with a surprisingly rich history. Although many players still refer to it as “Fischer Random”, the concept of randomising the back rank (as long as the king sits between the two rooks) actually predates Bobby Fischer by several decades, with similar ideas explored by players such as David Bronstein in the twentieth century. It’s known that Fischer popularised the variant in the 1990s as a way of reducing the overwhelming influence of opening preparation and encouraging creativity from move one. Since then, Freestyle Chess (or Chess960, named after the 960 possible starting positions) has steadily grown from a niche curiosity into a respected competitive format. Elite events featuring players such as Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura have helped push the variant further into the mainstream; events such as the WEISSENHAUS open run by venture capitalist Jan Henric Buettner annually as well as the Freestyle section of the grenke Open, the world’s largest open tournament, have been instrumental to the development of Freestyle Chess in mainstream chess circles. The appeal is obvious: every game feels fresh, intuition matters whilst memorisation goes out of the window, and even castling (which, amusingly, some of the top players have butchered) can produce wonderfully confusing positions.

AlphaChess has tried to put together some innovative events: last year we premiered the UK’s first FIDE Triathlon (three standard, six rapid and nine blitz games in a weekend) and this year we added “Duality” - six rounds of 20+5 rapid and nine of 3+2 blitz in a single day) but we don’t think that there’s enough interest for a regular (unsponsored) Freestyle Chess event yet. So, we are including just a single game at the end of each evening of Fusion.

Over the seven Fusion events, the best performance across five of those seven Freestyle games makes up the AlphaChess Rapid Freestyle Grand Prix - with (separate from the above) trophies available to win.

For anyone who doesn’t know about the variant (and we generally have to explain a couple of the rules at Fusion), the back row is randomised but with certain rules (bishops on opposite colours, the king between rooks and with castling rights maintained - in some set-ups, the King may not actually move when castling).


In February, for Fusion I, position 115 was randomly generated in front of the players. In April, it was position 225. (If we get 335 for Fusion III in June, it’ll be extremely suspicious.)

Analysis of the starting positions
Position 115	Position 225
Position 115 is very interesting. It’s initially evaluated as +0.2 with many moves retaining that dash of an edge for White. Out of those, my favourites are the long fianchetto 1. b4 (2%) as well as 1. O-O (3%), because why not castle on move one?! The database suggests that 1. g3 is played the most (28%), but the intricacy that surprised me the most about the position is that 1. e4 (11%) is no longer ‘best by test’ (sorry for the cliché!) and actually swings the position into Black having a slight edge (-0.3) owing to it being slightly tender and reducing the light-squared bishop’s scope. The key theme I can see in this position is the a-file bishop getting active very quickly.	This position is extremely balanced and Stockfish evaluates it as +0.1. The database suggests that 1. e4 is the most common move (32%) despite the fact the evaluation drops to -0.2(!), seconded closely by activating the dark-squared bishop with 1. b3 (28%). It seems like the approach which blends conventionality and objectivity the best is 1. d4, played a meagre 7% of the time. Throwing objective play out of the window, there’s an old stream clip when the entertaining GingerGM got Harry the h-pawn rolling on move one with 1. h4 (alas, -0.4).

What would you have opened with in each case?

Feedback on finishing with a game of Freestyle has been very positive, with a general feeling that it’s a lighter way to end the evening. Our next Fusion event is at our Potters Bar EN6 2HZ venue on Friday July 17th, 6.00-9.05pm.