Fischer Random is a lost cause anyway. It's quite good for training games, but it won't supersede regular chess. Chess players aren't fond of it. I actually asked Seirawan once, and he rejected it. Chess players want to be in control, but in FR they are always faced with unknown territory. In some of the initial positions white cannot secure an advantage. And in certain cases black's position is not tenable. To be able to study a standard opening position is a necessary prerequisite for chessplayers. It contributes to the vitality and depth of a game if it can be studied in advance. It's more fun to play also, because you can adopt your favourite attacks and defenses. In this way Fischer Random goes against the instincts of chessplayers.

But clearly, Fide chess is approaching a crisis. It could soon be renamed 'Opening Study Chess'. It's becoming ridiculous. I think there are two ways of meeting this challenge. (1) Follow Capablanca's proposal and increase the board size, or (2) introduce a form of drop-chess along Burmesian lines, as my own proposal Swedish Chess. It looks promising, but I don't don't know whether it speaks to the instincts of chess players. Nor do I know if it's complex enough, i.e., so that a multitude of deep strategies are possible.

Chess commentators have been ridiculing Capablanca for his big board proposal, and even argued that it was an expression of megalomania. But Capa was right. It's only that his proposal came too early, prior to 20th century's immense development in opening play. But now chess is approaching a crisis again. The big board alternative is underestimated because people think that its complexity is beyond human capability. I think this is a misunderstanding. This form of complexity is something which a human brain is very apt to handle. In regular chess a 'simple' rook ending could be immensely complicated, putting great demands on both understanding and calculus, whereas a complex middle game position could be much more easy to handle. This is a paradox in chess. In complicated positions with many pieces the vast majority of continuations are simply impracticable. A rook ending contain much fewer possibilities, but a much greater percentage of practicable continuations. In middle games there are many uncritical positions, which means that there are many playable alternatives. You could almost choose a move by random. This paradox, that it is often easier to play complex positions, makes the big board alternatives wholly playable, at least some of them. To many orthodox chessplayers such a game as Renniassance Chess, for instance, is unthinkable. It must be a joke. Nobody can control the complexity of this game. But thanks to this paradox of complex positions certain big board variants are probably quite manageable.

I don't think it's worth it to waste more time and energy on Fischer Random, as such. A better alternative is simply to pick good and interesting positions from the array of positions in FR and adopt them as new additional opening setups, like I did in my own proposal Chess-B. To chessplayers, this is much more fun , because then one can study and discuss this particular FR position.

Mats