Grendel Fischerandom

5 January 1998

The Fischerandom ended in a tie for first place between Derek Pugh and Roger Hardy on 7½ out of 9. Paul Butterworth (pictured right) was third on 7, and I was fourth on 6½.

There were just ten entrants for this event, so it was decided to make it an all-play-all with 5 minute blitz games, instead of a swiss with 10 minutes each on the clock. Now, this made it harder because there was less time to work out what was going on.

For those who don't know, Fischerandom is a chess variant where the pawns start on their normal squares, but the pieces behind are arranged in a jumbled up order. There are certain rules: White and Black have the same arrangement; the two bishops must be on opposite coloured squares; and the king must be somewhere inbetween the rooks (which allows for castling either side in a contrived way). The whole thing was promoted by Bobby Fischer (hence the name), and the idea is to make opening theory useless.

Well, it certainly did the latter! And with only 5 minutes on the clock it was hard to work out a plan. After a few rounds some things began to take shape. First, the stronger players were breaking away from the weaker ones, showing that it's not just opening theory that makes the difference. Secondly, it looked like piece activity was the key, and pawn centres were often irrelevant. The main thing was to get the pieces out and control the centre that way, even if it meant opening 1.b4 or 1.a4. Someone who tried to build a pawn centre would quickly find that the knights were in the wrong place to protect it, or that supporting the centre with pawns on c3 or f3 blocked in the bishops (which had started on a1 and d1!). After a few games I was saccing pawns all over the place, just to get pieces out fast. It seemed to work okay, but I guess it would be different at a slower time limit.

The next event at Grendel will be a rapidplay on Saturday 21st February 1998 (note this is a change from the Handbook).