Editing Chess960 (section)

==Creating starting positions==
There are <math>4 \times 4 \times 6 \times 10 \times 1 = 4 \times 4 \times 15 \times 4 \times 1 = 960</math>
legal starting positions:
* 4 light squares for one bishop;
* 4 dark squares for the other bishop;
* 6 remaining squares for the queen and <math display="inline">\frac {5!}{3! \times 2!} = \frac {5 \times 4}{2}=10</math> ways to place the two (identical) knights on the remaining 5 squares,
** or, equivalently, <math display="inline">\frac {6!}{4! \times 2!} = \frac {6 \times 5}{2}=15</math> ways to place the two (identical) knights on the remaining 6 squares and 4 remaining squares for the queen;
* 1 way to place the two rooks and king on the remaining 3 squares, since the king must be between the rooks.

Usually, the players accept the conditions of the organizer to generate the starting position with software, or if playing online, software can select a random starting position automatically.

If starting position software is unavailable or isn't used, there are many other ways to generate a random starting position with equal probability for each position, using [[dice#Polyhedral dice|polyhedral dice]], coins, or cards.<ref name="FideLawsOfChess">{{cite web |title=Fide Laws of Chess taking effect from 1 January 2023 |url=https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/E012023 |publisher=[[FIDE]]}}</ref> In 1998, [[Ingo Althöfer]] proposed a method that requires only a standard six-sided [[Dice|die]],<ref>{{cite journal |last=Althöfer |first=Ingo |title=LIST-3-HIRN vs. Grandmaster Yusupov |journal=[[ICGA Journal|International Computer Chess Association (ICCA)]] |date=March 1998 |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=52–60 |publisher=Universiteit Maastricht |editor1-last=van den Herik |editor1-first=Jaap |editor1-link=Jaap van den Herik|issn=0920-234X }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chessvariants.org/diffsetup.dir/fischer-random-setup.html |title=Fischer Random Chess: Manual Procedure for Generating Piece Placements |author=Hans Bodlaender |author-link=Hans Bodlaender |publisher=[[The Chess Variant Pages]] |date=2002-05-10 |accessdate=2013-01-26}}</ref> which goes as follows: 
# Decide which tile the light square bishop will go to using only the four pips on the six sided die because there are only four light squares available on the first rank, if the die rolls 5 or 6, try again. 
# Do the same for the dark square bishop. 
# Now we have six vacant squares left. In any order, roll the die and place the queen and the knight pair using from all six pips to five pips and then four pips.
# Now we have the last three vacant squares left. And there’s no need to roll the die for the king and the rook pair, just place them in the order of “Rook King Rook” because the king has to be in between the rooks.