Hi,

Kramnick (Chess Life, June 2004), has made an interesting point about
Fischer Random Chess, regarding the lack of aesthetic balance of random
starting arrays when compared with the familiar RNBQKBNR.

Kramnick may well have a point (and who am I to argue?), however playing FRC
should be a valuable learning experience for developing chess players
because of the opportunity it offers to avoid prepared openings (not that
learning opening theory isn't important for developing chess players - just
that it's equally important to learn the importance of positional vision
from the first move).

Perhaps if it were possible to restrict the opening arrays used in FRC to
*only* those with a degree of innate symmetry and reject those where (in
Kramnick's words) "the bishop stands on h8, the knight is on g8 and the rook
on f8", it might be possible to get the best of both worlds?

With this in mind, we have developed a new game, "Symmetrical Fischer Random
Chess" - this game has eight possible starting arrays (the array used is
selected at random before each game). The rooks always start on their
standard files a and h, and the king and queen always start on the d and e
files (but may be switched). Finally the two bishops always start on
opposite coloured squares. The eight possible arrays a

1. RNBKQBNR
2. RBNQKNBR
3. RBNKQNBR
4. RNNQKBBR
5. RNNKQBBR
6. RBBQKNNR
7. RBBKQNNR
8. RNBQKBNR*

*It is suggested that the orthodox starting position is not used for SFRC
games, reducing the number of possible starting arrays to seven.

An eight sided die (available at speciality games shops) could be used to
select the opening array in OTB games (thrown again if an eight is thrown).

The castling rules are the same as in FRC, all other rules are as orthodox
chess.

We have started a public discussion forum for FRC generally
(http://www.chess960.info/) with an SFRC area, and would welcome feedback on
this suggestion, or any other aspect of Fischer Random Chess.

SFRC can be played in correspondence form at http://www.schemingmind.com/

Cheers,
Austin Lockwood