Single Comment

One thing I would suggest here is...

STOP POSTING AN IDEA OR THREE TOGETHER TO FIX THE STALE OPENING OR DRAWISH ENDGAME AS A NEW GAME (or game variant)!

Ok, I said it.  If there is one thing, and only one thing that I would ask people to agree to on this subject, is that there come up with two lists: One for how to mix up the openings, and another to reduce draws.  Have these as a codified list of some sort (call them mutators).  Players playing a variant can agree to which of these can be used between them, and people play them. This goes from shuffles to gating for openings to no more stalemate, barring the king, etc... for the end game.  Let people pick and choose from the list and see.  Play a LOT of games to see what works, and perhaps come up with a values for the end game conditions to be worth.

My take on all this variant talk is there is far too much proposing and not enough testing for what works.  So, everyone has what they think is a brilliant idea, and it is tossed into a pile with a bunch of others, not tested to see if it works or not.

And then, you have another camp, even among variants people who say everything is just jim dandy, eventhough these things people think are ok with chess now, weren't in there prior to the mad queen.  Things I suggested about barring the king, and getting rid of stalemate were actually reverting back to pre-mad queen days.  These elements were considered minor victories back then.  But, when the mad queen got introduced, everyone thought chess was so fantastic, they decide to go with stalemate and also get rid of barring the king because 'it is not needed' because people saw the firepower and thought that 

Look at the rules to Shatranj, what chess was before the mad queen, if you don't believe me:
http://www.chessvariants.org/historic.dir/shatranj.html

# Stalemate counts as a win.
# Bare King counts as a win, provided that your King cannot be bared on the very next move. (See below.)

Again, if you want to do deal with issues, how about going pre-mad queen chess and bringing things back?  For those who suggest what I said is to radical, what can I say here except maybe people have been conditioned by habit.  I don't think being conditioned by habit is a think a person who is into variants should use to justify why something is.  Such talk is like a local Speed Chess club I know, lamenting that Speed Chess wasn't taken seriously, why they managed to frown upon anything else.