Weird castlings
Castling in Chess960 keeps two fixed destinations but starts the king and rook anywhere between the corners — so it can look nothing like the move you know. These are the distinct castlings, from the strangest down to the ordinary one.
- 01 SP-537O-O-O K c1→c1 · R a1→d1
- 02 SP-0O-O K g1→g1 · R h1→f1
- 03 SP-249O-O-O K c1→c1 · R b1→d1
- 04 SP-458O-O-O K d1→c1 · R a1→d1
- 05 SP-709O-O-O K b1→c1 · R a1→d1
- 06 SP-12O-O K f1→g1 · R h1→f1
- 07 SP-170O-O-O K d1→c1 · R b1→d1
- 08 SP-3O-O K f1→g1 · R g1→f1
- 09 SP-74O-O-O K d1→c1 · R c1→d1
- 10 SP-414O-O-O K e1→c1 · R a1→d1
- 11 SP-14O-O K e1→g1 · R h1→f1
- 12 SP-143O-O-O K e1→c1 · R b1→d1
- 13 SP-63O-O-O K e1→c1 · R c1→d1
- 14 SP-67O-O K e1→g1 · R g1→f1
- 15 SP-15O-O K e1→g1 · R f1→f1
How castling works in Chess960
The rule is the same as in standard chess: the king and rook finish on set squares — kingside the king on g1 and the rook on f1, queenside the king on c1 and the rook on d1. What changes is where they begin. Across the 960 starts the king can sit anywhere between its two rooks, and a rook can stand right beside it, so the single move that carries both to their destinations takes wildly different shapes.
Two of those shapes are impossible in a normal game. The rook can leap over the king, passing across the very square the king stands on; and the king can castle without moving at all, when it already begins on its destination square while the rook swings around it. Neither can ever happen from the one standard array, which is exactly why they look wrong the first time you see them.
This page lists the distinct castlings — many starts share a geometry, so each is shown once, with an example start and how many of the 960 castle that way — ordered by how far the move departs from normal. The familiar castle you already know (king e1→g1, rook h1→f1) sits near the bottom: just one of fifteen, and one of the tamest.