Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

i have noticed, if you click on 'Recognized Chess Variants' on this page,
it takes you to a page where all the variants have a picture, and are
described etc etc.
now, with the game 'chaturanga for 4 players' there is this comment.

'Two player variants would be, in this theory, formed by unifying two
armies, replacing the second king by a different piece.'

i don't know who wrote this, but i don't think they have ever played the
game. First of all, this completely destroys the 'doublemate' game. It is
perfectly playable with 1 player taking 2 sides, and the other player
taking 2 sides, with all kings in the game. 
It would stop the fun of having one army mated, and that
player fighting to release from mate with their other army.
Secondly, how are you going to make it balanced, where are you going to
put exactly, the kings, you will have a 'king army' attacking a
'non-king' army and 'non-king' army attacking 'king-army' for one
player, (or whatever) while the 2nd player won't have the same.
it is a natural way of the game, that 'red' and 'yellow' are against
'black' and 'green', with red in bottom left hand corner, and red
moving first, game going clockwise. red naturally attacks black, (of
course can attack green, but the way the pieces are set, it is easier and
natural to attack black, mainly because of the pawns) black natural
attacks yellow, yellow attacks green and green attacks red, so this makes
the problem of just making 2 kings.
i think it must be total speculation, to say remove a king per side and
add another piece, i have played the game, with one vs one, each taking 2
sides, it plays perfectly. I have never seen anywhere written this idea.
it comes from a conditioned mind that chess is 1 vs 1, 1 king per side.
oh and btw, red should be lower left corner, yellow is top right.

Whoops, I didn't think that I shouldn't nominate it because I made the
page.  I thought that I could do so because I didn't invent the game.

As for its popularity, it was made into a Super Famicom (Japanese SNES)
game (not many CVs are besides Chess and Shogi), although the rest of your
argument sort of makes this a moot point.

Atomic Chess is popular, it is played in several live chess sites. I don't
see a reason wht it shouldn't be a recognized variant. There are even
websites about it. To name two : 

http://virtual.parkland.edu/lblackburn/Atomic/atomic.html

and : http://vagonchik.info/sigge/tipau/

http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/janus.html

I would like to recommend Makruk/Ouk Chatranj as a recognized variant.  It
has been around for centuries and is widely played in Thailand and
Cambodia.  It appears to have a similar popular status in Thailand as
Shogi does in Japan (media reports of professional games, etc.)  It is not
'obsolete,' but is still popular in some parts of the world.  If Xiangqi,
Shogi, and Janggi are recognized, I think Makruk should get a spot on the
poll.

A quick review: I don't have much time to write one, but I'll briefly
state that I find it a very subtle game with a lot of tactical plays and
nuances.  Although similar to Western/Orthodox Chess, the lack of the
powerful queen and bishops in this game provides the players with the
challenge of overcoming the wall of pawns (called bia) by tactical
manoeuvres perhaps even seemingly costly sacrifices.  The khon is a
particularly interesting piece -- it moves like the silver in Shogi, and
is generally slower than the knight (called ma), but in end game
situations it can be considerably more powerful due to its unique
movements.

Accordingly, I strongly recommend making Makruk/Ouk Chatranj a recognized
chess variant.

Hi;

I have seen an interesting variant, called though I can't find it anywhere
it is quite fun. All players are labeled on the bottom with numbers, each
unique. Every type of player is assigned a number of points it is worth,
pawns, 1, rooks 2, horses 3, bishops 4, and the king and queen are not
assigned any.
Each of the two players is given a certain number of points, perhaps five.
They then each have five cards of paper (same number as points), and
secretly 'choose' their enemy's players, writing their numbers of the
chosen players on their cards before the first piece is moved. A player may
choose to 'buy' five of their enemy's pawns, or their bishop and a pawn,
the horse and a rook, etc, to equal the amount of points they were given.
During the game the players can order their enemy's players to desert, or
refuse orders at any time, and they will then change color. Your opponent
must 'prove' he has 'bought' your player before game started by
presenting the card he wrote the number of that player on to you. You may
kill your own players on suspicion of treason, and you may kill your own
players to get out of a checkmate. This makes for an interesting game. Has
anyone else here played this? What is it called?

A favorite chess variant of mine that I've played on the Zillions of Games
software is called Alekhine Chess. Of all the chess variants that I played
on Zillions it's my favorite. You can read about it here 
http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi?do=show;id=39

It has a non-standard board size of 8 x 14 squares and 3 non-standard
pieces. The rook/knight, bishop/knight and a queen/knight. All the other
chess pieces are used. If you wanted to play it on a standard 8 x 8 board
you could play a variant of this variant by just using one rook, knight,
bishop, bishop/knight, rook/knight and queen/knight and that way get in the
3 different pieces on a standard board. 

I recommend Alekhine Chess to anyone looking for an interesting chess
variant. May not be easy to find someone to play it with though you could
play it on the Zillions of Games software. Zillions came out years ago and
am not sure if it is compatible with Vista or Windows 7 but it is with XP
and earlier versions of Windows. Anyone looking for a way to play chess
variants against a computer might want to check out Zillions of games.

Fairy-Max should also not have any problems playing such a variant,if you configure it for it.

Superchess,as predefined in Fairy-Max, is sort of an implementation of this on an 8x8 board, where the orthodox pieces are randomly replaced by RN, BR, QN and KN.

Gives as usual good staff.
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