Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Kevin Pacey wrote on Sat, Oct 14, 2023 05:41 AM UTC:

Hi Bob

As a boy I was aware of some chess variants that used regular 8x8 chess sets, via my school chess club, notably Losing Chess (though I didn't much like that one). Later at the U of Toronto friends introduced me to other variants that used 1 or more sets (e.g. Replacement chess, Rifle Chess, Bughouse and Alice Chess), and Bombalot and a version of Kriegspiel were even published in some Chess Federation of Canada print magazine issues.

I also eventually found the odd book on or including certain chess variants (my own back then, or at a public library). However Ottawa and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are cities of considerable size, more likely to have such resources to a budding chess player potentially interested in CVs (many are not, and even see them as drawing resources like people and money away from chess). These days chess competes with many activities, but oddly over the board chess play has got a boon from Netflix' Queen's Gambit as well as many people being cooped up due to covid. Before covid people were often just busy, too, with little choice but to work at an office for long hours.

One chess book I had as a lad showed a diagram of 4 player Chaturanga, the first time I had an inkling that chess variants that used pieces beyond the orthodox chess ones existed. Also, chess variants may have it worse than chess, because all people need to do is Google 'Chess Canada' and they'll discover there is organized chess play in Canada (sadly, I think many do not even take this leap of thought). I recall hearing of fairy chess, but not of 'variants' when I was a lad, so how to find it unless by accident (or helpful web search result)?

At the moment I have no thought of organizing CV tournaments or a club (I do have friends that play some Oriental ones with me over the board now and then, at least before covid). However I'd like to think the groundwork for a list of many, many commonly existing figurines may prove useful to people some day. I also use LinkedIn, and have connected with many chess players/organizers/company personnel and even the odd variantist; perhaps down the road I can use those connections to advance the cause of CVs somehow.


Edit Form

Comment on the page House of Staunton Chess Variant Kits

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.