[XChamp]

[ QUOTE ]

The main point to Fischer's randomized chess is to remove the crutch of pre-planned opening books and force players to rely on "pure" skill. Does this translate into scrabble at all?

[/ QUOTE ]

I am a decent scrabble and chess player. I don't think the idea transfers over well. This is because there already is significant randomness in scrabble so that no game is similar to another. This is not true for chess, which is why shuffle variants have come about.

Also, letters are supposedly assigned their value based on how difficult it is to use them. A 'Q' is obviously the hardest letter to throw down so it's score should be much higher than an 'E'. This should be regardless of how many 'Q's or 'E's are in the grab bag. The idea behind this is to reduce the variance of the game.

For example, if you create a random grab-bag that contains half Q's and an even distribution of other letters for the other half, then according to your idea the 'Q's would be worth less because there are more of them. However, this just serves to massively increase the variance of play. Someone could get screwed very badly by continually picking up 'Q's and no 'U's. This would be somewhat mitigated by a 'Q' always being worth more than other letters (so if the player manages to use it then they get a lot of points), which is why the value of a Q has been assigned as 10pts and is held constant. Note that Fischer Random chess merely spices up the game and possibly creates some problems for someone who relies on memorization in the opening or maybe the middlegame, but it doesn't really make it significantly more likely that an amateur can defeat a grandmaster. In your 'pvn Random Scrabble" version it would make it much more likely for players to defeat superior opponents.

Also,

[ QUOTE ]
how much does the configuration of the board dictate your strategy?

[/ QUOTE ]

Strategy relies heavily on board configuration, however I feel there is little need for further randomization because the random element already exists in selecting letters from the grab bag. If I play first I might throw down 'QUEENS' as my first word and start it with the 'Q' one off the pink center (so it's a little harder for my opponent to use the surrounding bonus tiles) or I might draw completely different letters and then play 'VEX' and center it exactly for similar reasons. After just one play the board configuration is extremely varied. After 3 or 4 turns the board congurations are almost limitless even among master players. This is certainly not true in chess.