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Feeble Chess to Weakest Chess. Some Chess variants with weaker pieces. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

gnohmon wrote on Thu, Jul 11, 2002 03:34 AM UTC:

There are billions and billions of good chess cariants and a handful of Go
variants.

Statistically speaking, there are no good variants of Go. Aristotelian
logic would say that there are some. I have not looked at the suggested
list of variants because after all,

Go was in ancient times played on a smaller board; who can doubt that 17x17
Go is a good variant? My opinion is that 9x9 go is not a good variant
because too tactical. Who can doubt that 21x21 Go is good?

Other good variants of Go include Japanese versus Chinese scoring; komi of
0, 0.5, or 1.0; and so on -- minor changes to the rules.

Cylindrical Go is not so good. Alice's Go might work but would be so
cumbersome. Go with Different Armies is out of the question. Avalanche Go?
(((of course the Avalanche joseki is almost like a go variant, very much as
the Boden-Kieseritzky Gambit is almost a variant game of FIDE Chess))))

Compared to chess variants, I think that it is a correct usage of language
to say 'no' go variants even though it would be more presice to say 'almost
none'.

Chess variants include shogi, xiang qi, shatranj, Tamerlane's Chess, FIDE
Chess, Courier Chess, Thai Chess, Malayan Chess, and so on and so on.
Recognizably the same game, with amazingly different flavors.

The true Go fanatic will argue that no variants are possible because the
game is already so perfect.