I have never seen this before.

In China, they have figured out that the bishops belong on the long diagonals, like a pre-fianchetto, and the rooks are better situated on the c and f files.  I'm not sure how castling works. 

This would be a chess 960 game, so called because of the 960 positions which you can start from when the pieces are ramdomly assigned on the first rank. Check your settings if it was a mistake and you dont like it, but try playing some games. Its good fun and great for learning how to best use each piece in an unfamiliar setting without any opening theory.

Thanks.  I agreed to the challenge having never seen it before.

 Quantum physics says that the pieces do not actually exist discretely on their squares, but as wave functions centered on those squares. This means that occasionally when you observe them (and thereby collapse the wave function) they will be found on other squares.

agreed

I was once checkmated when a vitual queen gained enough energy to become a real queen from a nearby rook travelling near the speed of light.

I like 960 because it throws off the book worms. So much preparation these days. 960 is a good way to test your raw chess fundamentals and skill, and there's less of a chance of being beaten by the opponents that are great at preparation and memorization. Pretty sure that's why Fischer has his name attached to it.

China creates their own variants. I think that one's called Sha-Shong, or something..

Walk me off?