I like the reverse symmetry idea, it gives random setup variants a natural tension from the start. With each side starting with a strong half and a weak half. And with each side's strong half facing the other side's weak half and vice versa. One must decide to attack or defend. each of these necessarily take away from the other. I f you attack too much your defense suffers, If you defend too much you make no progress to winning!

Welcome!

-Ludic

My name is José Carrillo. I'm originally from the island of Puerto Rico, and I currently live in Ontario, Canada.

I'm the founder of the Fischer Random Chess eMail Club (FRCEC), and I'm a rookie chess variants designer.

I recently discovered the Prime Minister piece (Bishop + Knight) and Modern Chess (I know, I know, who cares about 9x9 variants…[I do!]), and after defining the general 'Modern' principles, have designed several 'Modern' Chess variants including: Modern Random Chess (9x9), Prime Ministers Chess (9x8), Contemporary Random Chess (8x8), Modern Capablanca Random Chess (10x8), and I'm working on a couple others.

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I believe there is a news wiki that allows for the signing up for latest new blurbs. Most of these are IAGO World Tour events that get added.

What I don't want to have happen is that by people being involved with IAGO Chess System, the end result was they lose the ability to make money using it. As for the Chess of the Future Project, that I will let others decide on.

the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.

Cheers
Graeme

I am Rich Hutnik. I am involved with IAGO (International Abstract Games Organization) and the IAGO World Tour (think World Poker Tour but with chess, checkers, variants, Go, etc…) and a range of abstract strategy games. The mission is to get abstract strategy games to go through a boom like poker had AS A GENRE, and not just a single game the way chess did in the 1970s. The point is to get it sustainable, and have it grow and be more profitable. In other words, work with a genre rather than a single game, as is normally done.

A byproduct of this, is I am working with chess variants, in order to help the community develop some common standards, terminology, and so on, to facilitate holding tournaments and perhaps working towards having perhaps a world chess variant champion, to legitimize variants as being an actually form of chess worthy of respect. To this end, I am proposing a "Chess of Tomorrow" project be started. The end result would be an open-source framework to facilitate the variant community to communicate with each other, be able to get needed equipment, and develop a roadmap for chess to continue to evolve, instead of just being stuck on the fallout of the Mad Queen. I am looking to offer the IAGO Chess System as a starting point here, and would look for people who want to be involved, to get involved. Please look at, test, rip and rebuild this. I also would like to have the best "terms and conditions" form with this document, so that it is free for people to use to make money, but also has people giving back to make sure that the framework grows and matures.

Anyhow, that is my take. If anyone is interested in the "Chess of Tomorrow" project speak up. We can end up having heated arguments, disagreements, ideas, compromises, etc… the end result should be a framework for chess to operate in (with some details) that won't dead-end up keep growing, that will tend to all the needs of all people into it, from the purist to the variant people, to people who like to experiment.

You may be onto something here, with small communities being involved in testing variants and so on, and local dialects arise that people play. I would support that happening, under the provision that such lend to the global version of chess.

If you would like to get involved with the future of chess, please do contact me on the abstractgamers.org site, for IAGO. My hope is enough people can get together and we open-source evolving of chess. I can't say I fully agree with your approach, but in it may be part of the answer.

Interesting that you mention regional variants, I think the following is a partial list of country with their unique variants:

Mongolia- Shatar, China - Xiangqi, Japan - Shogi, Korea - Changgi, Burma - Sit Tu Yin, Thailand - Makruk, India - Chaturanga (historical?), Iran (Persia) - Shatranj (Historical) Turkey (Byzantium) - Byzantine chess (Historical), Turkey - Turkish Great Chess (Historical), Germany - Gala (Historical?), Spain - FIDE chess, Bulgaria -bolyar chess (historical)

It would be intereting to have a system where to be a world champion, one must be top ranked player at the greatest fraction of all the regional variants.

1. Keep the FIDE game (perhaps with minimal modifications, such as upgrading the stalemate to a win) as an international standard.
2. Encourage each country to officially adopt its own national chess variant (some countries, such as Japan, China, etc. already have one).
3. Jurisdictions that are part of a federation, such as American states and Canadian provinces, should also be encouraged to adopt an official variant for their state/province.
4. Cities and other municipalities should be encouraged to adopt local variants.
5. Each individual chess club should adopt, or make, it own unique variant(s), to be played alongside the FIDE, national, regional, and local variants at the club.

That's my wish-list. Who's going to help me make it happen?

I am currently working on a number of variants involving different boards and pieces, and am learning the Zillions of Games programming language. Whenever I can squeeze in the time from my busy schedule, I will contribute here.

When I have a chance, I would like to implement that piece market thing, that will economically value pieces right.

Besides chess variants, I also like to contemplate go variants. Beyond games, I like to write poetry, read a good story, and prove impossible theorems.

I look forward to reading and learning much here.

My name is Claudio Martins Jaguaribe. I'm a 37y.o. lawyer that lives in Rio de Janeiro. I live with my family and 3 dogs and a cat (all 4 necessary to the house: house guardians and mouse catcher (really)).

Besides loves chess, I'm always have been a anarchist, so, I never accepted the rules and the movements of the pieces, mostly the knights and pawns. One rainy day in the campus library I've discovered historical variants in a enciclopedia and I loved!! I even designed a huge variant that used a board, roughly, 1x0.5yd (each cell 1.4 inch) but I lost my notes when I moved. :-(

Recently I came across the CV Page and discovered that I was not alone! Thank you guys!!

Besides chess I like RPGs, swiming, soccer, cigars, beer and wine, women, hevay metal and bikes. (the last five I call the "fun pentagam" (beer+wine=alcohol, so 1)).

I'm taking public exams to get some office (judge, DA, state defender, public defender, police captain, so on…); when I get it I'll buy a bike and drive, perhaps all the way to US. ;-)

Hugs and pints 4UAll!

Some have been implemented elsewhere by enthusiast. Thanks to those people.

My current holy grail is building a chess site where you can battle other players on a variety of boards and pieces of your choosing so that we can have battles between Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Indian/Western chess. I will call this variant World Chess. It will feature many fairy pieces and their values will be important so I have a vested interest in helping with those aspects…

I have actually only "invented" one variant: Schoolbook Chess. However, I am working right now on adding some more theory to the short-range project.

I am busy, and have an intermittent internet connection (this is why I am unable to play in the tourneys), but will make contributions here when I have time to do so.