George Duke wrote on Thu, Dec 10, 2009 05:18 PM UTC:
The Next Chess to replace 500-year-old Mad Queen 64 is all but inevitable by the 2020s. Probably the evolution will sanction 5 or 10 different embodiments on most probably larger board(s). More so than F.I.D.E. Chess itself, puny 64 squares itself is dead -- to use Fischer's and Nakamura's label. 7x7 as 49 would be termed ''puny,'' wouldn't it? To encourage these NextChesses, NextChess5 is for recapitulation of themes past. There will be 3 more Recognized NextChesses only this thread. They are deliberately from Aronson, Gilman, and Gifford who have none of the running total of 21 nominees yet. What will improve and replace f.i.d.e. 64 squares has been a constant theme of CVPage since inception 1995. In fact, Next Chess is the very rationale of the Chess Variant Pages. Here's an important comment by Ralph Betza the premier variantist along with T. R. Dawson. Betza was the first real prolificist and at the same time last prolificist whose every game, 150 of them, rates excellent from some standpoint or other.
[Incredibly Dawson had no rules-sets at all -- suppose he would not stoop to that -- but instead many inventive pieces.]
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=614 Since Betza never used CVPage identification, he could not edit his comments even for spelling.
Other designers' past comments that bear on ''Next Chesses'' are intended to link. Above Betza calls Chess Different Armies ''my mind's greatest invention.'' Chess Different Armies is not and will not be a nomination. Betza has Black Ghost already named here of the 21 chosen so far. Black Ghost ironically is the only one of the twenty-one on 64 squares the smallest.
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24303
The other nomination Switching Chess has 64 squares in preferred embodiment but 64 are less necessary there than Black Ghost.
