Rich Hutnik wrote on Sat, Mar 29, 2008 07:18 PM UTC:
What they have done with checkers professionally is use a 3-Move randomized
opening. They are also experimenting with randomly removing one of the
checkers at the start also, in addition to the 3-Move randomized opening.
So, in a nutshell, they are going the Chess960 route with checkers to keep
it mixed up. I believe another approach possible with checkers is gating
in different checkers from different version of checkers (aka,
IAGO/Seirawan Chess). You could have a reserve of say Turkish or Polish
checkers, and then drop into a standard checker game. Players decide when
to enter them. By properly valuing the pieces, one could use the system as
a form of handicapping, but you also can do a random balanced shuffling of
which additional pieces enter the game.
This methodology will lead to the development of very sound principles
that can be taught, but not specific lines of play.
