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You know, I hate the expression 'replace FIDE chess', because that has been one of the biggest causes of massive flame wars over at rec.games.chess.* in the old USENET days, or on any non-Variant chess discussion board. I feel that most chess players do not want to play nor learn variants. Now, I personally don't think this is a good thing--observe that I'm posting here.

In terms of replacing Chess, I think Arimaa has the best chance, simply because it doesn't suffer from the 'My laptop can beat a grandmaster' problem that Chess has.

But, I don't think all Chess players will give up Chess tomorrow and start playing Arimaa day after tomorrow. It's more like, should Arimaa succeed, people will start to get turned on to Arimaa at a faster pace than Chess players will lost interest in Chess or die.

Once nice thing about Arimaa is that it's easy to make a variant on a Triangle, Rhombus, Hex, or any other strange board: Just define the place where the rabbits need to go, the places where each side sets up their pieces, the trap squares, and you're good to go.

- Sam