Chess960, or Fischer Random Chess (also written Fischerrandom and Fischerandom), is a chess variant produced by the late former World Champion Bobby Fischer by modifying the rules of Shuffle Chess so that castling possibilities exist for all starting positions. It was originally announced on June 19, 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Fischer's goal was to create a chess variant in which chess creativity and talent would be more important than memorization and analysis of opening moves. His approach was to create a randomized initial chess position, which would thus make memorizing chess opening move sequences useless. The initial position is set up in a special way and there are 960 such positions, thus the name 'Chess960'.

“I don’t play chess anymore, I play Fischer Random. It is a much better game, more challenge. Chess is a dead game, it is played out. Fischer Random is a version of chess that I developed or invented, you could say, where you shuffle the back row of the pieces, not the pawns. Each side has an identical shuffle, so that everything is symmetrical, just like in the old chess. There are just a couple of rules: one rook has to be to the left of the king, one has to be to the right of the king, one bishop has to be on a light-colored square, and one on a dark-colored square. That’s basically it. You can learn the rules in two minutes. It’s a great game, and can become the standard of chess.”
Bobby Fischer,                                 Tokyo, Japan – August 20, 2004

I still remember when Robert J. Fischer ended his self-imposed exile from the world of chess in 1992. Nearly lost amid all the political uproar and fan hoopla which surrounded his return to play an unofficial "world championship" match against his old nemesis Boris Spassky was the fact that Fischer had been thinking long and hard about the game of chess in the two decades since he'd won the FIDE world crown.