George Duke wrote on Fri, Jan 15, 2010 07:15 PM UTC:
Seriously what should Next Chesses be like? These 21 were all nominated in
2008. Over a year later they were ordered here, as
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24759.
There are concise explanations justifying each inclusion that together will become an article. Even the lowest ranked, Seirawan Chess, would be more interesting in this day and age than f.i.d.e. chess. The latter still has all the glory in rote scores played and re-played by the ignorant masses 1000s and 1000s of times per day online. It is their particular secular religion, lackeys and conformists, like working crossword puzzles; and at the opposite pole, variantists are content to be patsies to the status quo. By February will be factored in Fourriere's Bilateral, Aronson's Transactional, and Fischer Random for accumulating 24 CVs. Then guaranteed to Gilman, Gifford, and J. Smith are one spot each. There are 3 more slots to consider adding to 30 CVs, being a round number. A few among others under preliminary consideration are Cylinder Chess, Quintessential, Grandmaster Reshevsky's Zonal, and Three Fat Brothers. But #s (unordered) 28, 29, and 30 may end up being none of those. Or there may be all those particular presumptively deserving ones and in addition 9 more for 40 CVs, instead of 30, to be next chesses. Or 13 more to 40 CVs including none of those happened to be just mentioned. There are many ways to go, and there would be no difficulty extending the list, in principle and in fact, exactly ordered properly to 50 CVs. The only error I notice so far is Centennial's being ranked one or two too high; but I will not change that now arbitrarily without explanation. The project is a tough problem aggravated by the Aughts' prolificist ethos under CVPage auspices, and by the outside dogma of the OrthoChessists' religion. Another nuisance is regional forms not worth very much any more for active widespread ongoing play, such as ancient Xiangqi, Shogi, and Makruk, all still vying or dying for attention. People and programmers first becoming familiar with those, wanting to show their intellectual credentials, become their leading
proponents. Those 3 are only of historical importance. Why else would
Chinese youth be abandoning Xiangqi in droves to less tasteless f.i.d.e 64?
Because even little mad Queen 64 is more logical for players than classical
inspiring Xiangqi. Better 40 Next CVs than CVPage's formal 4000 CVs.
Eventually designers will get ashamed of themselves and their subjective
artwork, convenienced by Internet piece-working retarding progress, and
take up such topics of evaluation importantly. And Chess will stand a chance to acquire cultural rootedness again. Unlike the 21 CVs above, Aronson's Transactional
Chess,
http://www.chessvariants.org/incinf.dir/transactional.html,
may begin to address computer dominances. Are we going to watch
computer play computer in the future more exclusively? What can be the
mechanisms of how to change the rules in process, or to introduce verbal as opposed to strictly calculational skills, in order to help thwart the uncreative stale mechanical play coming out of competitive copycat over-preparation?