From: Michael Vanier <mvanier <at> BBB <dot> CALTECH <dot> EDU>
Date: 17 feb 1999
Subject: Re: shuffle chess(or shogi)

[Larry Kaufman:]
> but it is quite
> remarkable to me that the three World Champions all like the idea,
> considering that they are all on very bad terms with each other (Fischer
> calls the other two cheaters, and Kasparov and Karpov have been bitter foes
> for about 15 years).

Hmmm... how does one cheat in chess?  Move the bishops to adjacent squares
when the opponent isn't looking? :-)  I guess in shogi you could always
keep extra pieces in hand to drop :-)  Not to dump on Fischer; he's been a
key supporter of shuffle-chess for years, which I think can only be good
for chess.

Parenthetically, there are also some variants of chess which change some
rules to make draws impossible.  It would probably be good if chess adopted
some such rules.  One senses in shogi and in Chu shogi that a lot of effort
was put into the rules to make draws difficult to achieve, and I think
chess would do well to follow their example.

OK, enough of my yakkin' for now...

Mike