Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Hi Aurelian

Some folks don't mind a game that is lengthy on average in terms of moves. A game of Go goes about 75 moves (that is, 150 ply) on average, a game of Shogi takes rather less than that on average, but a game of Chu Shogi apparently can easily go over 200 moves (that is, 400 ply), which may be an extra reason why it was eventually replaced in popularity by standard 9x9 Shogi (i.e. with its innovation of drops) in Japan (noting Easterners are supposedly a bit more patient as a rule than Westerners, I seemed to learn somewhere long ago [edit: this may especially be true of kids, whose interest would benefit the participation numbers of any Next Chess]). I suspect a lot of chess players like that an average game of chess only takes about 35-42 full moves, and any Next Chess would probably benefit from a similar average length of game. As an aside, I remember once the start of a subsequent round of a weekend chess tournament in Toronto in the 1980s was held up by one game not ending till well after over 100 moves, as there were no exchanges in it until past move 100 (sufficent pawn moves to keep the game alive till then, though). Variants that use very large boards, unless they're somehow special/limited like the game of Go, can only produce 100+ moves long games on average, I fear.

Regarding whether there ought to be room for more than one Next Chess, my guess would be if a given variant becomes enormously popular, ever, a world or regional organization for the play of it will inevitably spring up, and it will effectively become its own board game that's independent of other chess variants. This CVP website acts as an incubator for less popular or less well known variants - Game Courier lets one choose many variants to play at once, in particular. However there are dedicated Shogi websites and organizations already, for example, and most serious Shogi players would tend to be catered to mainly by these, I suspect. A single Next Chess would simply be the most overwhelmingly popular chess variant at some future point, if it overtakes standard chess for that.

Hi Kevin,

About the topology I agree with you with the same train of thought actually, with the reserve that I would not consider much circular boards, unless as a niche. I would consider though boards akin to Balbo's. But it seems to me that almost no one else does :)!

Also rooks and bishops should probably be the backbone of all "nextchesses". Some larger one could even have four each or 4 bishops (they probably have to be evened numbered as they are color bound) and 3 rooks. The later is a bit uncomfortable to me.

Probably 12x10 is the largest possible next step, but then we could have the nextnextchess, and so on. Who know where future technology will, if ever, limit us.

I think that an initial piece density of around 50% is desirable even if I tend to go a bit over when inventing :)!

Bigger games means longer games. We should all accept that.

On a 12x10 game, pawns starting on the 3rd rank are almost a must unless you use gating (as in Musketeer chess), or some similar technique. JL Cazeaux uses pawns that may always move twice in his larger boards. That one is a great idea :)!

Even trades of different pieces should definitely be a goal. My apothecary series has such a goal. Although having multiple levels of such trades is quite interesting 2 (like Q and unicorn- BNN- on first level, the griffin is out there on larger boards, too).

Games with drops should have weaker pieces by default, but they do have their own special flavor. I'm aiming for my apothecary shogi games to introduce multiple levels of promotion so staying on the board is encouraged :)!

About AI, I agree unless we become cyborgs or something.

So the only thing I'd like to add is that there is no reason to have a sole next chess. I had said before that I find Grand Chess and Omega Chess as good candidates who should not exclude each other. Also different armies games have special flavour but they are extremelly difficult to desing, as they add a balanced armies requirement. Also once there why Stop at that level? If say 3 12x10 games become very popular why not improve them into 18x14 games for example or 16x16?

Last night I was thinking: why should I continue to play or try to invent chess variants? Aside from entertainment value, and to escape from standard chess, while still being involved with board game(s) like it, the answer seemed to boil down to the quest to find or invent the Next Chess. First, I will speculate that such a golden variant will not replace chess for 100-500 years, i.e. not in any of our lifetimes. So, finding/inventing the Next Chess would be a generational project, realistically it seems. Here at CVP website, alone, we may leave our own contributions (our games played and/or invented, and opinions about what the Next Chess should be, or include/exclude in the way of characteristics) and just hope one day when a Next Chess is sought for, due to real need in the far future, our two cents worth might help our decendants decide on the beast, rather than make a less informed choice, perhaps in haste.

After trying to define the parameters of what the Next Chess ought to include (or exclude), I must say that I concluded tentatively that there is not much left to invent that fits in well with the boundaries I came up with - perhaps not so shocking when one considers there's 5000+ variants on this website, with 1200+ presets on Game Courier alone (of the latter I even remotely like around 10%, which fits in with Sturgeon's Law, i.e. that 90% of anything is crap).

What are the parameters for the Next Chess I came up with? Well, I didn't need to convince myself of too many before it looked like the possibilities left might be rather confined. First of all, chess, the most successful variant, is played widely and most seriously in physical tournament halls. You cannot expect it to go mainly online anytime soon, if ever. So, 3D, 4D+ variants are all ruled out, as a physical board needs to be convenient. Circular boards aren't too bad for the size of the cells, for decent physical size pieces as well, if 4x16 or even 5x16 is used. The problem is, another conclusion I drew, that most everyone (especially if one wants to include children) would want to include rooks and/or bishops as the primary slider pieces to have in any sort of variant, and on circular boards, a single rook, powerful as it is, is incapable of mating a lone K normally, which is hardly a step forward for anyone graduating from normal chess - looking ahead, this is an argument against e.g. Omega Chess, with its extra corner squares [edit: which also effectively act to make the variant practically 12x12 in terms of taking up physical space, and for the physical sizes of cells and pieces]. Hexagonal boards so far have not proved popular, as Glinski's never took off, and at 91 cells the size of the cells and pieces is rather reduced, too, for a typical set I'd think.

That leaves 2D square or rectangular boards, which must be at least 8x8 in size, or at most 12x10, if a board is to fit fairly nicely on a coffeetable or on a table in a tournament hall. Any bigger, and the physical squares and pieces become unattractively small, arguably (it's hardly a step forward for those graduating from standard chess sets, at any rate). Also, well played games could prove too many moves long on average, on such big boards. Anything smaller than 8x8 will likely prove to make for games that are too short in length.

For games that aren't too long, 32-48 pieces in total would be ideal, IMO, both to pack up the pieces, and so that after all the exchanges in a game, it finishes at a reasonable move number (say pieces are traded at the rate of a pair every 5 moves, as in chess, and an average game of that ends when about 16 units are left on the board). 60-72 pieces in total might be tolerable, and 56 for a total has at least two historic precedents.

A nice pieces/empty cells ratio for the setup is 50% as in chess, though it's hard to prove this, and this is a more flexible guideline I'd say. 10x10  is an otherwise nice board size that has trouble meeting this ratio smoothly. That's aside from the fact that board-lengths greater than 8 cause pawns to take longer to promote, if no special rules or pawns are used. Betza has expressed respect for the ancients who invented the chess pawn type, and I'd consider it the best pawn type as a rule, IMHO. Pawns being on the 2nd rank in a setup are ideal, but on the 3rd rank is not so bad for the pawn-line either, except we lose the sweet possibilities of smothered and back rank mates that come with chess' setup and rules.

As for the pieces, for the sake of the children's participation alone, symmetric moving pieces are best as in chess, though divergence might be allowed (i.e. capture differently than move). For a given variant, I agree with Fergus that at least some of the piece types should be close in value, so as to make for more interesting trades, and perhaps a greater range of opening possibilities. With Rs and or Bs being desirable, along with at least one piece with queen-like strength, all the above rather limits the piece types that can be included in the Next Chess, no matter the board size (if rectangular or square).

Other parameters would be that the Next Chess should not be too drawish, and that the pawns all be guarded in the setup, to try to minimize White's early initiative. I'd say drops are double-edged, if allowed, making a game more tactical, and less of a blend of strategy and tactics like western chess. The pieces should continue to be nice figurines, and there should be a fixed setup, for people's coffeetables, merchandizing and movie scenes alone.

As for computer resistence as a feature for the Next Chess, I'd pretty well give up on that for any board game; AlphaGo put in the last nail as far as my hopes went, especially should AI keep going forward in big strides in our future.

[edit: 18 April 2018: Other parameters would be if there's queens in a game, start with one per side. Also, have no bishop's adjustment rule or multi-path piece types or Ultima-style ones, for simplicity for the sake of children's participation. Having the king as the one royal piece and pawns that promote as in chess (i.e. last rank, any piece type) also seems tradditional, logical and wise. Lame pieces don't seem particular attractive, with chessplayers graduading from nimble knights. Any element of chance should be avoided, as per a strength of chess. Neutral piece types seem best to avoid. If compound pieces are used, ones with R power should not be placed in the setup so that they can develop symmetrically then swap quickly. A near-symmetrical setup of some sort is always a good idea. Also good is to avoid extra off-board squares and/or pieces, for the sake of streamlining, e.g. for decorative sets on coffee tables or perhaps even clubs and tournament halls. Ideally all the ranks in each army should have no empty cells, although a minor deviation from this that looks rather nice may be okay.]

[edit: 18 April 2018: Based on all the above criteria being applied stringently, I came up with just 5 'Next Chess' candidates (after an initial pick of 41 from my massive but fairly choosey favorite games list) - disappointing since so few, and since only one isn't one of my own inventions (the 4 of mine all had these stringent criteria in mind in their design, though): 10x10 Shako (the only one of the 5 not mine), 10x10 Sac Chess, 10x8 Hannibal Chess, 10x8 Frog Chess and 12x10 Wide Nightrider Chess.]

At the risk of getting side tracked Fergus, I can see how a fairly large body of tentative opening theory might quickly be developed for a given chess variant. Get two (or more) fairly strong and seperate fairy chess engines to play each other many, many games of the variant, at a brisk (but not quite blitz, perhaps) time control, and put the games into a large database over time. Initially have each engine give an evaluation on the position following each sequence of moves from the start of a given game, after a certain number of moves, but only permantly record the winning engine's evaluation (in case of a draw, use the average evaluation of the two engines). Then anyone might study a portion of the database results at leisure, and decide what to trust or perhaps even write books about as far as a variant's opening theory is concerned.

In the case of chess, I use a certain opening database program that includes an engine's evaluation of a position at more or less almost every point of a sequence of possible chess openings (at least the fairly major ones; many human evaluation symbols are thrown in for comparison too), so the idea I put forward in the paragraph above may not be that unrealistic conceptually anyway. A serious drawback that the chess opening database has which I use, as far as I'm concerned, is that it does not helpfully point out when a position is a forced draw, let alone if it's a drawish position that's hardly worth playing out for a chess master at least, though even chess books by humans often fail to point such things out.

I think the main reason Chess960 (Fisher Random Chess) works is that it is still otherwise Chess. Adding randomization to another variant, such as Sac Chess or Gross Chess, seems like overkill. We are not going to live long enough to see significant opening theory develop for these games, not even if one of them replaced Chess in popularity today. So, even if there is a good chance of these games becoming popular and developing extensive opening theory, that would be a problem for later generations to deal with. And maybe they would handle it by slightly tweaking the game or replacing it with another variant. I also agree with the points about a fixed position being advantageous for displaying the game, whether in movies or in your home. It gives a frame of reference that people wouldn't have with a random setup.

Jeffrey, I can add a number of things to my previous post on this subject. As you wrote, chess has the advantage of a strong tradition. For many lesser variants of popular card games, a lot of people prefer playing well established games that everyone already knows how to play, when sitting down face to face, so it's not a question there of lacking equipment (a deck of cards), as I think Fergus once alluded to long ago. Unless there are relatively few rule differences from chess, a chess variant faces a similar hurdle of familiarity alone to overcome, on its way to ever obtaining widespread acceptance (for everyday face to face contests, at least).

One of the things that may well have made chess so popular is simply the beauty of the pieces for a physical set. Shogi, for example, may lack this advantage (at least in Western eyes), besides games of it tending to last somewhat longer than chess on average, in terms of moves, afaik. Crazyhouse has the excitement of shogi drops and attacking, as well as somewhat retaining the beautiful physical pieces to play with. I don't know how long the average game lasts though, and it may not be strategic enough to encourage a large percentage of chess fans to ever switch over, even if they've already ever retired chess. Crazyhouse has been out there a while, so presumably it's reasonably well tested, yet it still accounts for less than 1% of all games played on that chess server I wrote of in my previous post, in spite of the fact that it's quite a popular chess variant currently. I once noticed someone's suggestion of using Chess960 style random setups for Crazyhouse, to avoid any opening theory developing, but this might have some of the same disavantages as for Chess960 that I wrote of in my prior post (i.e. some setups perhaps favouring White, at least).

I actually prefer a fixed start position for the setup of a given variant if possible, given that merchandising and movie scenes can be aided by this, not to mention books on opening theory and the attraction of a decorative set in one's home with pieces already set upon the board in an orderly fashion. I'm also not too averse to a certain amount of opening theory developing over time. That's though I've heard that's actually getting to be a concern for Shogi, which otherwise seems almost an ideal next chess in many ways - not least, the low draw rate in elite play even, and a fixed setup may make any potential next chess not an 'Immortal Game' (i.e. it may eventually ought to be abandoned/replaced if a dominant variant is deemed desirable or not). As I wrote earlier, a way to avoid this is e.g. Chess960 style shuffling of the setup, or using card decks, as much as I don't entirely like either means, at the moment at least. However, nothing as seemingly perfect as chess once seemed to be (to chess players, at least) may ever be possible to find. My own Sac Chess variant, for example, has a lot of possible pros as well as cons in my own eyes, and when people have commented on it it's often been to wonder about possible cons. The range of good relatively early opening moves for a game of it might actually turn out to be significantly lower than for chess, but as reserve pieces are brought into play from the rear, the later stage opening possibilities hopefully hugely multiply. That's without any Chess960 style shuffling of the setup being tried.

One thing that might happen at some point in time is that FIDE or someone else may get a committee to study many chess variants, if it looks like chess is getting to the point where it needs replacing 'officially', at least for big events. I hope that The Chess Variant Pages website, or some variation of it, will still be around at that point, with all of its diverse chess variants to consider as candidates for the next chess, besides variants that might be found elsewhere, say on the internet. I'd note that not all chess variants were intended to be practical or serve as a possible next chess, however.

Kevin, you raise some interesting points about how few people play variants on most servers.  Nevertheless, I think in the near future it will be much easier for the average person to create their own variant software, as well as testing them out on very strong engines (to ensure it's fair and has a limited draw rate).  This will eventually result in some great tried and true variants.

I believe that some draw possibilities were added in the original development of chess in order to give some chances for the slightly weaker player who is behind in a game (in other words, the winner has to really earn it by avoiding stalemate or insufficient material, 50 move rule, etc.)  Orthodox Chess has a strong advantage of tradition.  Many people (probably not those on this site) actually like discussing known openings and they like to see how players try to do something new on move 11.  I'm with you though - I'm not a fan of that as a spectator.

Still - as you mentioned, it would be nice if draws were limited (and that the decisive games have clarity in what the winner did differently).  I know that grandmasters can still appreciate a hard fought draw, but I agree it's sometimes just ridiculous.  Not long ago I was looking at the results of Karpov vs. Kasparov matches in the 80's, and they have so many early draws by mutual agreement (over ten games in a row sometimes)  Even when GMs comment on something like their drawn Berlin defense game, they seem bored and ready for the next game.

Like I implied at the beginning of this message, better apps and software will make the future ripe for variants - and the most clever will win out.  Challengers could take turns playing each others' inventions and favorites, analogous to the classic basketball game H.O.R.S.E.

I think what might end the popularity of standard chess worldwide some day would be a high rate of draws in top level chess, and opening theory regarding the best openings becoming exhausted (the Black side in particular finding it ever harder to get a fair rate of wins in high level chess). I'd note that poor 8x8 checkers still seems to be going in terms of some popularity, and has events with cash prizes, in spite of any trouble with draws at the top level, or exhausted opening theory (one section of two in world championship checkers starts with a sequence of 3 randomly chosen moves). Checkers may last at least several decades more, so I'd guess chess' popularity won't dramatically drop for a century or more.

I used to think computers being better at chess would dramatically drive down its popularity in time, but this doesn't seem to have happened. The danger of computer-assisted cheating is something people grapple with in a number of walks of life, as a consolation, and lots of people seem to think it's no different for machines to outdo people in racing, so why not in mindsports? In any case, games that feature (or add) elements of chance such as cards don't seem more hopeful in this regard, as e.g. Poker is now being very well played by computers.

I've thought that as long as standard chess dominates, for whatever reason, one or more chess variants (other than regionally popular ones) won't have much of a hope of coming close in terms popularity, i.e. to share the stage with chess (at least over-the-board), much as there is more than one Poker variant played at Poker events. On one chess server I've noticed only about 2% of all games played are chess variants, half of which are bughouse, and much of the rest being crazyhouse. So, I see no next chess making much headway for at least a century. However, let's assume I'm wrong about that, but not about high draw rate in high level chess and/or exhaustive opening theory killing chess off. The next chess would have to fix those serious problems, and any others, without being too repulsive in some way. Chess960 may not solve the problem of high level draws, and some random setups favour White or may even make for a more drawish game. Shuffling the pieces at setup time may be a useful idea to keep in mind to stop exhaustive opening theory, if suitable for a given variant, however. Another way would be to use cards to randomize openings further, at least, though there's always some element of chance then, which a chess purist may dislike.

I invented Sac Chess (10x10), which has 30 pieces per side, as an attempt to avoid high draw rate, and allow for virtually inexhaustible opening theory, though as always extensive play is needed to be sure. The game also may allow for shuffled pieces in the setup as a variant, with some sort of castling rules being added, as a way to further make theory inexhaustible. However, again extensive testing would be needed to see if all shuffled setup positions would be fairly playable, i.e. more than for Chess960. Fwiw, I had initially hoped Sac Chess might be computer-resistant to some extent, but I've become pessimistic about such a hope for any game, should computers and programming continue unabated in terms of progress. In any event, Sac Chess has not been much played yet on Game Courier.

I've looked a bit at some other 10x10 games, and to my surprise not many seemed to be inexhaustible in terms of future opening theory. Such a large board, plus more than 20 pieces per side, may be best, to hope for inexhaustible opening theory (Knightmare Chess is 8x8, and with the help of its card decks it may not have a problem this way). 12x12 Gross Chess has a lot of pieces, and they are not mostly very powerful (as is the case for Sac Chess, if that's a drawback). I don't have an idea of whether Gross Chess takes a large number of moves on average to finish a game (chess has a nice average of 40), but the game is already popular on Game Courier, at least. For a coffeetable I can picture 10x10 being nice for a decorative set in some possible future reality, but I'm not such if 12x12 would be too big. For comparison, the board game of Scrabble is 15x15, albeit with small cells and tiles. Such are some factors to consider when hoping a variant might prove to be the next chess some day.