Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Just to act as devil's advocae: The main drive for developing shuffle
games is to make development of opening theory much harder, by presenting
the players with an unpredictable array. The price of someimes getting an
unplayable, and always a les aestethically pleasing setup is taken for
granted. But having them decide about which swaps to make kind of subverts
this purpose.

If I uderstand your prescription correctly, one can make 5 x 5 = 25
shuffles this way. (Each side can swap the center piece they have to swap
for 5 others: everything except Rooks and the Bishop of the other color.

Note that ICC supports several shuffle variants: except FRC there is
wildcastle (K&R stay in place), nocastle (shuffle all, but symmetric
setup), random compositions (but only one King each, and symmetric), or
independent random shuffles of everything for white and black. Unlike FRC
they are basically all just normal Chess with a different initial position,
and there are more 'wild' variants like that, which do not satisfy the
criteria one uually puts on opening arrays. (e.g. all Panws starting at
4th/5th rank, or white starting at 7th/8th rank and black at 1st/2nd). 

In winBoard I added an option to play every supported variant as a shuffle
game; how it exactly shuffles depends on the existence and type of castling
rights. I did not implement asymmetric shuffles yet, though; perhaps I
shuld offer that too.

My [2005-01-14] comment to the Carreras Chess page begins: 'Carrera Random Chess has become Pairwise Drop Chess. Two games were played on the CV Game Courier in December 2004. You start a game by choosing one of five pairs: R+R, N+N, B+B, K+Q, Archbishop+Chancellor and placing the two pieces on your first rank. Bishops must be placed on opposite color squares. Each player copies the opponent's drops, placing pieces on the same files, and then chooses another pair. This process uses up the first three moves of the game.'

I included 'free castling' in the rules of this game. These rules give each player some degree of choice as to the initial setup, but still allow thousands of different games.

Each side can choose between 8 different positions: 1 (the standard position) + 4 (the K can swap with both N, one B, and the Q) + 3 (the Q can swap with two N and one B). (Obviously, the Q-K swap is redundant in the latter case).

Since both sides swap independently I get 8 x 8 = 64 positions. Am I correct?

Chessplayers very much like to be in control, that's why I allow them to choose which swap to make. They can study their own favourite swap. Moreover, in a tournament game, it will be practically impossible to predict the initial position, anyway. So it retains much of the effect of a randomized swap.

However, I have also implemented what I term 'Relocation Random Chess' which randomizes these 64 positions. In this way we get 64 positions, mostly unbalanced, which deviate marginally from the standard position and would comply with the general chessplayer's perception of strategical soundness. I think I will adopt the alternative name Chess64, for this.
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/relocationchess.htm

Oh sorry, I did not get that both sides can chose between K or Q. Then
indeed there are 8 possibilities, 64 in total.