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Shatranj. The widely played Arabian predecessor of modern chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Jun 6, 2009 10:19 AM UTC:

Standard Shatranj is an excessively boring game. It is very slow, the Pawns and Ferzes merely crawling over the board, and the draw rate between equally skilled players is about 70%. (For Mad Queen this is about 30%, for Capablanca-type variants only 16%.) Having watched many Shatranj blitz games, I can imagine why there was such an incessent drive to modernize some of the pieces.

I don't think shuffling would solve anything. And it certainly would not have to invoke Fischer, as there is no castling, and none of the special rules invented by Fischer to preserve castling in Shuffle Chess would have to be applied. (i.e. no reason to require K between R in Shuffle Shatranj.) 

Elephants would still remain useless pieces under normal shuffle rules, which would keep color-bound pieces on different colors. It would be more interesting to allow Elephants on the same color, so they can defend each other (as in Xiangqi), then they could be used in fortress building. But the risk is that the game might become even more difficult to win then, in absence of Cannons to penetrate the fortress.