Has anyone come across this alternative version of chess?  A very good friend sent me the game today--it was invented by his father-in-law.  Choiss is played with a regular chess set, but before play begins, the players build the board.  White has 32 white squares and Black has 32 black squares.  So long as the squares are connected onto squares of the opposite color, anything goes, which means that the board ultimately takes on funny shapes and can have holes in the middle.  Then the players take turns positioning the pieces on their respective sides of the board.  They take turns, placing pawns, then minor pieces, then rooks, then queens (the king can be placed at any time).  From that point on, it's fairly straight chess.  I've always been rather skeptical of chess variants, but thought this was rather clever and good fun.

Has anyone else come across this?