Kevin Pacey wrote on Fri, Sep 23, 2016 09:39 PM UTC:
Fergus wrote on None
...Chess has been finely honed by natural selection to be free of arbitrariness. Every rule and piece in Chess serves a purpose, and none are arbitrary. Since Chess is what won the survival of the fittest among Chess variants, I expect that any variant capable of succeeding Chess would also have to be free of arbitrariness. But most Chess variants differ from Chess through some arbitrary change to it, and they easily get lost in a sea of variants that each differ from Chess in their own arbitrary ways...
In a way I like seeing this opinion, as a chess player (who also has fully recovered from some loss of faith in chess due to computers). However, I'm fairly sure you didn't mean to say that chess has so far been clearly superior in terms of merit to all chess variants. That would be a little disconcerting, even to me (after my venturing into the world of variants), since I concluded that among the dozens of variants I looked at (however briefly), many even in my eyes had compensating merits for anything they might lack compared to chess - some are quite different to chess and are hard to fairly compare. What e.g. Circular Chess lacks in terms of basic mates compared to chess, it makes up for in certain other ways (though initially these ways did not impress me so much), and Circular Chess may well not even be one of the better variants objectively (if objectivity is possible comparing variants).
I'd also wonder a little about whether chess doesn't have any arbitrary aspects to it, too (some might say any game or sport must have some arbitrary rules/kludges). For example, stalemate being a draw could be ruled as a win (or 3/4 of a point) for one side, instead (but that would spoil many fine stalemating combinations/swindles, besides altering current endgame theory). One thing 8x8 chess has going for it is that bishops are very close to knights in value (even for those who quibble), so variants on other board sizes and/or shapes may lack this nice feature. However, in Glinski's Hexagonal Chess, for example, where apparently a knight is worth a pawn more than a bishop, interesting trades of knight for bishop and pawn can frequently occur (I think), rather than bishop for knight as in chess, making the nice equivalence of a B for N in chess something that's not so meaningfully special.
I think what has made chess so popular is that given its rules & 8x8 terrian, it works remarkably well (e.g. in producing many brilliant games between people), and no one seems to know exactly why. Still, remember that Shogi & Chinese Chess are considered "Classic" variants, too.
Fergus wrote on None
...Chess has been finely honed by natural selection to be free of arbitrariness. Every rule and piece in Chess serves a purpose, and none are arbitrary. Since Chess is what won the survival of the fittest among Chess variants, I expect that any variant capable of succeeding Chess would also have to be free of arbitrariness. But most Chess variants differ from Chess through some arbitrary change to it, and they easily get lost in a sea of variants that each differ from Chess in their own arbitrary ways...
In a way I like seeing this opinion, as a chess player (who also has fully recovered from some loss of faith in chess due to computers). However, I'm fairly sure you didn't mean to say that chess has so far been clearly superior in terms of merit to all chess variants. That would be a little disconcerting, even to me (after my venturing into the world of variants), since I concluded that among the dozens of variants I looked at (however briefly), many even in my eyes had compensating merits for anything they might lack compared to chess - some are quite different to chess and are hard to fairly compare. What e.g. Circular Chess lacks in terms of basic mates compared to chess, it makes up for in certain other ways (though initially these ways did not impress me so much), and Circular Chess may well not even be one of the better variants objectively (if objectivity is possible comparing variants).
I'd also wonder a little about whether chess doesn't have any arbitrary aspects to it, too (some might say any game or sport must have some arbitrary rules/kludges). For example, stalemate being a draw could be ruled as a win (or 3/4 of a point) for one side, instead (but that would spoil many fine stalemating combinations/swindles, besides altering current endgame theory). One thing 8x8 chess has going for it is that bishops are very close to knights in value (even for those who quibble), so variants on other board sizes and/or shapes may lack this nice feature. However, in Glinski's Hexagonal Chess, for example, where apparently a knight is worth a pawn more than a bishop, interesting trades of knight for bishop and pawn can frequently occur (I think), rather than bishop for knight as in chess, making the nice equivalence of a B for N in chess something that's not so meaningfully special.
I think what has made chess so popular is that given its rules & 8x8 terrian, it works remarkably well (e.g. in producing many brilliant games between people), and no one seems to know exactly why. Still, remember that Shogi & Chinese Chess are considered "Classic" variants, too.