Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

NextChess1 through -8 came out of talk on the problem of proliferation and lack of play of worthwhile CVs. Joe Joyce made classic informed comment in 2008 -- not fully appreciated at the time -- pertaining to so many CVs:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=18323.
The point of having 30 Next Chesses is
to have 30 Next Chesses, not one. Like Brainking has 40 or 50 CVs; but
elevating 30-50 to some significance eventually would be more
enjoyable than Brainking's tacit subservience to OrthoChess64. Otherwise
it is just random self-promotion and impulse ratings and poorly-attended
intermittent contests and, worst of all, CVs only as artwork. Right above finishes the original 21 CVs nominated
from fall 2008, and next target is to have the complete comparison-ranking 1 to 30
by adding one Gifford, one Gilman, one J. Smith. Fourriere's
Bilateral, Aronson's Transactional, and Fischer Random are already to be
reviewed soon as #s 22-24. Then there are to be 3 more after-the-fact
wildcards #s 28-30, for which your any nomination still counts. It's goofy and tedious just to throw up half-analysed CV after
CV, living in ignorance of 90%+ of the material already within, when the process if continued is potentially unlimited into millions of variant
rules-sets -- and that much more ignorance. Not to mention, increasingly duplicative work with the plagiarisms and borrowings getting harder or time-consuming to ferret out. The new decade 2010-2019 ought to be for organization of the
past decade's ill-advised proliferation gone wild.  ''Next ChessXXs'' address just that, and another separate strictly-novelty CV scheme is also needed to rank and recognize great Track Two material -- like Rococo, Eight-Stone, Promoters, Philosophers, Tetrahedral -- intellectually as having value beyond mere CVPage self-expression and legitimate ongoing experimentation.

The stories of the year and the CVs of the decade, i.e. those promising of
f.i.d.e. replacements for small-size 64 squares, generally expected. Actually,
three of the 21 are themselves 64 squares in original embodiment: Black Ghost, Switching, and
Seirawan. And not from these closing ''aughts'' 2000-2009 are really 1960s Modern Chess and
from the 1970s: Three Player, Big Board, and Wildebeest. From rather the
late 1990s: Sissa, Centennial, Kings Court, Black Ghost, Eight-Stone, Melee; those however appear probably all to have been produced under
CVPage auspices or motivation  -- with the exception of Betza's Black Ghost.

Here are the leaders in order so far:
(1) Bifurcators -- http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/bifurcation.htm,
(2) Great Shatranj --
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSgreatshatranjm.
Congratulations, including the following. Seirawan Chess ranks last at
#(21) of the 21 CVs from year 2008. Reversedly to his credit, Grandmaster
Yasser Seirawan ends the decade with a personal rating in your basic
64-square f.i.d.e. the highest at any time the entire decade of the Aughts.
The f.i.d.e. chart shows he gained two points to 2649 from January 2000 to January
2010: 
http://ratings.fide.com/id.phtml?event=2000032.

Hey, George, thanks for the compliment. I'm not quite sure how Grand
Shatranj snuck into 2nd, and I won't be surprised if it falls considerably
against those designers who were here before me and haven't been evaluated
yet. 

A few comments on the rules. The rook option was the first change I made,
at the suggestion of David Paulowich. Other options I have not yet added to
the rules page came from several people. I believe both Jeremy Good and
Graeme Neatham suggested the double step for a pawn's initial move [and
probably a few others whom I don't now recall]. HG Muller has put the game
in his software, with the pasha [DWAF] in place of the general [WF] as the
default selection. And while castling was never really considered, I
recently got a good suggestion from LL Smith about the king's leap. He
suggests allowing the king a 2-square leap [maybe with possible capture] as
its first move, which seems to me to be very much in the spirit of the
game.

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24759
The 21 CVs ranked in 2009 from nominations in 2008 break down by size into: 64 squares for Sissa, Black Ghost, Switching, and Seirawan;
68 squares for Bifurcators and Mastodon;
72 squares for Eight-Stone and Templar in different configurations;
80 squares for Bifurcators, Great Shatranj, Mastodon, and Schoolbook;
81 squares for Modern and Melee;
96 squares for Kings Court, Courier de la Dama, and Three-Player;
100 squares for Unicorn Great, Big Board, Eurasian, Centennial, and Fantasy Grand;
110 squares for Wildebeest.
By country of origin are Sweden(Bi. and Ma.); Canada(U.G.); Germany(B.B.);
Mexico(S.); France(K.C.); Puerto Rico(Mo.) With USA as default, there may be some other Spanish- or French-named not of USA among the remaining, for which reason with caution they are now only listed by abbreviated initials, since there may be errors. Both criteria are interesting breakdowns, and no one has clamoured for additions or omissions thus far, so gradually these Next Chesses can be taken as informed, justified hierarchy to be enlarged. On the sizing subsets,
others than Bifurcators and Mastodon may embody differently than their written-up
preferred invented size; for example, conceivable and allowable would be some supposed 100-square CV above altered to 80 squares.  Think of the lower half of the total ongoing number of CVs ranked each step
of the way as ultimately to drop out, as it were not making the cut. In other words, currently we are especially interested in 1-10 or -11 or -12. When the scale comes to include an eventual thirty CVs, the fifteen CVs ranked 1-15.  Forty CVs will have been intended to single out approximately the twenty highest etc. Even something like last-ranked Seirawan Chess, having no chance anymore for sustained interest this 21st Century, has consolation of honoured place as at least having undergone scrutiny in being advanced from total obscurity out of the 4000 CVs within CVPage and 2000 CVs in 'ECV'.   They would be the two major sources for this (or any) project relating to how approved Chesses must be played in future.

There are how many different bifurcators? Ranking them all as one seems a
bit like cheating, since I'm sure some of those pieces would result in
better games than others; clearly some have more intuitive moves.

Which of these 24 bifurcators are preferred,
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/bifurcation.htm (#1), the author and inventor
M. Winther has so far not specified. Likewise, Charles Gilman was asked which of his 200 CVs would be recommended for Next Chesses. Neither answered, understandably. The one is in the catbird seat for this Next Chess project, and the other has inherited from the vanished Betza towards being the premier variantist. It is
left for critics to determine whether to select Gilman's AltOrthHex --
which would be the only hexagonal chess -- or a Gilman four-player, or
rather just keep working through his 200 CVs for others. As with  Bifurcators,
Schoolbook Chess (#10) represents the many subvariants of the original Carrera,
become Capablanca.  It has also been remarked about Switching Chess' (#20) being a
multiple CV, or Mutator, able to apply widely in different mixes and sizes.  Big Board (#6) has recent expedited Big Board form. Bifurcators were
originally nominated as Venator Chess, http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/venatorchess.htm; Venator is a bifurcation type modelled after Dawson's non-bifurcating Grasshopper,
http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/grasshopper.html. George Jeliss' ''All the King's Men,'' http://www.chessvariants.org/index/external.php?itemid=pcAlltheKingsMen, has at least four bifurcators, Asp, Eagle, Moose, Sparrow. They also all happen to be modified Grasshoppers, and the latter three are far weaker piece-types than the twenty-four of above Bifurcation article. No previous bifurcator is specifically embodied in starting array or rules-set. So they all apply now on both 68 and 80 squares. Flexible practice among CVers determines that in each case above, it is worthwhile to take the many subvariants as within purview of the essence of each same invention. 
Final details of initial arrays and piece-movement modality are conveniently postponed whilst rationale and argument for the ongoing fundamental hierarchy continue to develop.

This correction for Centennial(now #10) changed from #8 was already
justified here:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24849 and
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24604.
That portion now goes  ''...Eurasian(#8), Schoolbook(#9),
Centennial(#10), Kings Court(#11)...'' It was just taking the Centennial
CV far afield both to get rid of Spearman and to add more QuadraPawns in
process not intuitive enough to justify being the same CV-type.
(rerun) ''There was one huge difference between a brain and a computer.
And that's that a computer, if you poured a bucket of water on it, would
short out, whereas the brain is wet...'' --Miles Herkenham, neurologist
1992

I still don't understand what are the criterions for this evaluation.
Isn't it time to reveal this soon?

Since there will only be one new CV inserted to rankings every couple weeks in the project  for now, Winther's question on recapitulation is relevant, ''What are the criteria for this evaluation?''
First are links back to fall 2008 on the successive threads:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=NextChess.
The one above has 118 comments, and only 25 (the maximum the system allows)appear, so I am re-reading them to summarize and/or further link back to some of the earlier isolated 93 comments.
Others followed in order:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=NextChess2,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=NextChess3,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=NextChess4,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=NextChess5,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=NextChess6,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?subjectid=NextChess7.
Since we have the end-part done correctly, the rankings 1 to 23 so far, I want to be sure the rationale and the criteria get re-stated without contradiction.

Transactional Chess is next,
http://www.chessvariants.org/incinf.dir/transactional.html. Which CVs is it related to? As described in 64 squares, Transactional is like   Sissa, Fischer Random, Black Ghost, Switching, and Seirawan. Also each transaction is somehow like the set-up phase of Big Board. Then the variability could be like Fantasy Grand, a different matched armies on larger 10x10.  Three Player takes three, and so does Transactional with referee.  Preliminarily, Transactional is representative of Next Chess solutions by changed formatting and has definite resonance with over century old Kriegspiel. For about a decade Kriegspiel historically was actually considered to be a (secondary) Next Chess even more than Fischer Random Chess comparatively was during the past Aughts decade 2000-2009. Neither Kriegspiel nor Chess Different Armies itself will be considered these threads since they have had their day in measure and analysis.

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25116
One rationale is to establish baseline of to be approved CVs. These are Track One in the sense of not too far afield from F.i.d.e. or Carrera-Capablanca playing rules. Actually Next Chesses Fischer Random and Schoolbook are practically unadulaterated CV versions of those two with just enough of a quirk. Ones listed in the second half are more likely to migrate up or even down and out of the rankings. It has to start somewhere based not on mood but analysis, and with view eventually to attention of the 99% non-CVers who know the increasing malaise of just going through the motions, when computers already have the best moves. Going more slowly, next up are nominees of Gifford, Gilman, and J. Smith. Now Gifford's
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSbishopknightmo
is nominated subject to any substitution by the same author recommended. Joyce nominated Time Travel of Gifford but that will be in the group 28-30 in spring 2010. One sub-theme under review is the board. Among the first ten so far, Winther indicates Bifurcators work on 80 squares as well as 68. Likewise, for example, Cetina may approve or rework Sissa up to preferred 80 from 64, and it is possible a couple others high-ranked might down-scale boards from 100 to 80 for better conformity. Great Shatranj, Mastodon, and Schoolbook are already 80 squares.

Okay. Both Not Particularly News
http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/not-particularly-new.html
are nominated for #28 before #29 Gifford's Time Travel and after a yet
to be named #26 J. Smith and #27 Gilman. You will find out in spring 2010 whether Not Particular New is better than Fischer Random(10) or even Unicorn Great(5) by objective criteria. There is no mistake in the rankings so far, but towards 50 entrants there is more nuance. Maybe these ranked-for-approvals
will reach 100 not just 50. It is okay to have overlap of analysis Track One and Track Two. For example, Eight-Stone's review in context of Next Chess Track One admires it as excellent Track Two,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24663.
In fact, by 2011 there will be Track Twos in their separate rankings. Notwithstanding, Eight-Stone (#17) and Transactional(#15) will only be Track One, as they fared well enough there, the latter as once-number-one Kriegspiel stand-in. The first three Track Two nominees herewith for those later threads are Aronson's and Howe's Rococo, Izzard's Philosopher's, and Thompson's Tetrahedral. Probably, if you break it down, designer and CV, CV and designer, half the efforts by the various artists and scientists are intent on attention for Track One alternative, and the other half purely for fantasy and novelty not seeking wide play as some standard chess. Some of the fantasy ones are still worth thinking about for Track Two, but many appear too outlandish even for that. They all start with thought experiments, as announced by Cetina's tribute for Next Chess Sissa(#7):
http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/sissa.html. Sissa invents Chaturanga:
http://www.chessbase.com/columns/column.asp?pid=166.
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSmanandbeast17

This recapitulation is by way of critique of the status quo. These Next
Chesses started in 2008 under inspiration of profound CV-thinker Editor
Joyce and also method of International Abstract Games Organization classes. 24 are so far ranked, of which the
crux are the upper 50% or 33% at at any given time, which bore and passed
scrutiny. Nothing prevents its growing to 50 or 100 -- or 500, with
diminished marginal utility -- and fluidity will permit extensive migration up and
down according to future play and choices. At this point, even one opinion
by anybody expressed would change one or many rank positions.
Self-nomination is encouraged, as Aronson just did with Not Particularly
New. Put your money where your mouth is, not burrowed into unnoticed
artwork. One conclusion: increasing preference for 8x10 as superior to
minimal 64 squares. Exceptions: well-tailored Three Player (rank #4) or
upcoming N.P.New rather on 9x8. Another heuristic: Track One and Track Two
are useful, inasmuch as Track Two is further removed from Shatranj and
strong Queen Shatranj, still played mechanically today by the great
unwashed multitude. Many will always prefer Track Two, the way there is
always an avant garde. Yet Chess is arguably the artifact across cultures most
unchanged since the first millennium, so there is potentially 
religious as well as scientific importance in the Project. Any website freely avails all rankings I and II but permission of authors recommended for implementation of play. It is better for something to happen than for nothing to happen. Nothing happens but self-indulgence when repeat designers do more post-your-own art, Gary Kasparov's ''nonsense.'' Over-proliferation, with great similarity to past designs and small re-arrangement, has made discovery of prior art more taxing. So more and more critics will be needed to prioritize and counter the now recurring remark: ''I don't know whether this is a new idea, but here we go again...'' Ye Gods. When every dog will have had his day, the Chickens will come home to roost, and the Worm will turn. Rest ye on it.

I don't know how profound a CV thinker I am, but I do enjoy good design,
good play, and a decent amount of innovation. Or so I claim. Actually, I'm
probably one of the more opinionated people here, and tend to think
'good' is stuff I like. But I've been here over 5 years now, and have a
bit of experience with which to judge. This leads me to make statements
online which can come back to haunt me, because 5 years is pretty new in
this field, and I might have read 10% of what's available on CVs. So let
me embarrass myself in the future again by giving my impressions of the
games I played or am playing in the current tournament, since I'm no
longer a participant.

Eurasian Chess, by F Duniho, is an excellent game that gives players the
problem of dealing with some enemy pieces that need to be blocked to keep
them from capturing your pieces, and other similar enemy pieces that need
that interposed piece there to capture the one behind it. The game plays
very nicely as opponents try to balance their defenses against 2 types of
pieces with an opposite characteristic. There's a very nice strategic
tension built into this game. It is slightly counterbalanced by the general
weakness of the cannon-type pieces added, as they are minor and very minor
pieces, and lose effectiveness in the endgames as the western sliders gain
power. The set-up is nicely minimal [one of my prejudices - for] on a 10x10
board, which enhances the game by not cluttering it. As it is both larger
than FIDE and the average piece value is less than FIDE, the game is likely
to last a bit longer on average, I'd guess.

The Ajax [J Carillo] mutator is an excellent idea, and complements FIDE
very well. The 2 dropped ministers [orig - pasha: DWAF], while pushing the
density and power/piece up a bit by introducing 2 more major pieces per
side, work well in this context because they are short range, with
knightlike mobility rather than being long range sliders like the B, R, and
Q. All in all, a fine game for the tournament.

Circular Chess [? Byzantine era?]provides another interesting mutator which
can be applied to many games, but one that I find personally less
interesting. The geometry of the board, 4x16 and circular, so there are 2
lines of attack toward the opponent, constricts the pieces a little too
much for the novelty of the board to counterbalance, in my opinion. The
rooks always move 16 squares, max, the bishops 6, and the queens 22. The
pawns have a 50-50 chance of being able to only capture 1 way. The king has
a 50-50 chance of being able to move to 1 of either 8 or 5 squares, the
knight, 1 of 4 or 6. The rook is slightly improved, everything else is
weakened - by the board geometry only - most pieces being noticeably
weaker. The combination provides a very different game with some good play
value, but the game itself must have less depth than FIDE chess, and
probably much less. 

Modern Carrera's [P Carrera] is a standard 10x8 with BN and RN pieces. As
such, it should be considered a scenario of Carrera/Capablanca Chess, and
not actually a game in its own right. Of course, then the 10x10 Grand Chess
[C Freeling] is both the scenario generator for 10x10 FIDE + BN + RN games
and just a larger scenario in the Car/Cap family of games. This category
also includes Euchess [C Cetina], a Grand Chess variant.

Finally there's my game, HyperModern Shatranj. Other than commenting that
I was surprised by the rather effective pawn play in the game, demonstrated
by my opponent, I'll leave discussion of this game to others who've
played it - lol, not many!

Thanks again. NextChess, unlike -2,-3...-8, overflowed 25 comments,
in fact 100 comments by mistake. These are what Joe said there, showing consistency,
to help kick them. They are easier to retrieve directly here than arduous
link for over-25 comments:
(1) http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=20582,
(2) http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=20591,
(3) http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=20630. In (1) Joe's 9x8 for Modern is infrequent but occurs in Eight-Stone(#18) and in Not Particularly New, #28 Next Chess soon to be up-slotted. Templar is also 72 squares but 10x8. They all enter at the bottom, and that is their number for interim. So like Time Travel now is #29 but likely to become upper half in all its ramifications once evaluated and up-slotted. On boards, singled out in rough order so far might be 8x10, 10x10, 68 and 72 squares in variable shapes, 9x9, 64 squares (too small). Those latter two under consideration were increasingly alarming and untenable solutions as Track One. Who knows but that Sissa(#7) on 8x8 may improve to 8x10 etc.
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25116

To Aronson was mentioned that Transactional Chess is stand-in for
Kriegspiel. There were already other such explicitly admitted instances in the Next Chess project from 2008. 
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25116
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=23374
They include Schoolbook(#9) for all the Carrera-Capablancas, Fantasy Grand(#16) for publicized Chess Different Armies, and Switching(#23) for Mutators that otherwise keep the core 64-game intact. Any modest change in castling on 64 would be one of the latter that Switching represents too for now. Schoolbook is elevated, though other RN-BN arrays are as worthwhile, because of deep analysis by Trenholme. Kriegspiel was #1 variant of Chess about 1900, and there is no need to re-highlight it whilst K. could be considered today special case of new Transactional anyway. If Transactional(#15) does not hold water altogether for first tier, then neither does subsumed K; or at most by itself K. would only gain notch or two. Thus Next Chesses remaining in top-10 might see their own replacement eventually by close cousins they also have to stand for, to the extent there is lack of agreement among variantists on cases amounting to one and the same CV, more or less. For example, expedited Big Board is probably still Big Board, and the rules ought to be modified by consensus. Specific rules-sets numbering only 1 or 2 will have to be distilled from each numbered Next Chess in the top one-third or one-half. Realize that with input there is to be ongoing migration up and down the ratings. Most of them are already in rules-set compliance that way without ambiguity. Ideally, even Bifurcators(#1) will need specific mechanism for substitutions, or random selection, of piece-types out of many bifurcators, from game to tournament etc., readable as couple or three at most condensed complete rules-sets covering them all -- Caissa willing.

Wanting to complete the project by 2029 for the upcoming thirties, it is
time for another of several waiting nominations to be slotted.  At this juncture there are several authorship nominations for variety without materialized CV yet. It means last-minute announcements. Okay,
Transactional Chess(#15) was placed over six months ago,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25116. The comment placing it at Aronson's write-up instead of over here is linked above and the order will be carried forth. Aronson subsequently self-nominated Not Particularly New. Also in the interim Winther expanded Bifurcators(#1) to include deflectors, 
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=26403, rather than addressing request here, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25270, to conflate the many Bifurcators to a couple of coherent rules-set mechanisms.  Two steps sideways, one step forward oblique.
This NextChess8 will have to morph to ''-9'' in order
to keep each later NextChess under readable 26 comments, which 26th lops
the first one. Here were the latest rationale and grounds for extending the project past 50 CVs as necessary, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25134. These are all Track I and a separate Track II will begin in 2011.  Track II, identifiable just as being farther afield from standard western Chess, has already nominations Tetrahedral, Rococo, and Philosophers. They will not be mutually ranked until there are first at least 12 nominations, then a pairwise comparison Tetrahedral to Rococo will begin their ordering.  Which of the two is better?  We shall think of Track Two as more long-term rather for the 2040s. The nomination order is the priority of eventual placement with explanation, and the next ones Track One are to be, whilst they are all temporarily ranked last: 25) CV by G. Gifford other than below Joyce-nominated Time Travel, 26) CV by J. Smith, 27) CV by C. Gilman, 28) Aronson-self-nominated Not Particularly New, 29) Time Travel. Anyone can nominate a #30, or sure to be #s 31-36 in challenging conventional, popularizable categories of reform omitted so far. The unconventional will be the separate described Track Two.

I have 2 nominations for Track II, personal favorites. I'd like to
nominate Mike Nelson's Pocket Mutation as a game that best exemplifies
chess variant, and David Paulowich's Opulent Lemurian Shatranj as a game
that best exemplifies chess. I've raved about how good both games are
before, so you're all spared that now, but both games are more than good
enough to belong on anybody's list of best chess variants.