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A. M. DeWitt wrote on Fri, Jan 11, 2019 10:54 PM UTC:

Increasing the board size does give the pieces more freedom of movement, Mr. Duniho, but it also does another thing - it makes it harder to keep track of everything. You yourself have stated this in your article "On Designing Good Chess Variants" in the section "Don't make your game too small or too large."

"Small games can finish too quickly, and large games can last too long. Note that the three classics are on moderate sized boards, ranging in size from 8x8 for Chess to 9x10 for Xiang Qi. 10x10 has proven a good size for many games, though 12x12 and up might be too large. I have recently (November 2009) created a 12x12 variant called Gross Chess. To some extent, this is an experiment with a board of this size. The only pieces it adds have been tried and tested in other variants, which allows the game to be a test mainly of the increased board size. Games against Zillions of Games suggest that the game is enjoyable but the larger size makes it harder to keep track of everything. I haven't yet won a game against Zillions without taking back moves. I have played a couple games on Game Courier, drawing one game and losing the other."

As for your comments on piece density, I don't think that cramming the pieces together within a 10x10 space will create too many problems. Kevin Pacey's Sac Chess also has a piece density of 60% at the start of the game, and is one of the top 50 games on Game Courier.


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