Rated Comments for a Single Item

'GHI,LargeCV': 'Grand Chess completes the revolution in the game's rules that was started over 500 years ago,' says Kevin Scanlon. Then Grander Chess supposedly improves upon Grand Chess by three features. First, stalemate becomes a win. Second, en passant is dropped in favour of return to passar battaglia. Third, Queen is centralized, shuffling slightly just three pieces in array. Such minor revision is best left in Comment, which unfortunately Carrera's Chess imitators on 8x10 neglect, preferring to write up each version as if it were some new game.

Could we please move the debate on naming chess variants from the Grand Chess 2 page to this location? I admit to feeling a slight twinge of guilt over appropriating the name 'TenCubed Chess' for my entry in the recent Contest. There were several other worthy entries that had 10 piece types on a 10x10 board. At least I resisted the temptation to name it 'Grand Omega Chess'.

As a mathematician, I prefer to avoid making claims of 'maximal logical consistency' for my own chess variants. All things considered, I would rather not comment on pages containing such claims, especially when the author has a plan for reducing the number of draws.

As for the 'business of unprotected Pawns', which was raised in previous comments here, that has been a problem in chess variant design ever since the Mad Queen was invented centuries ago. It is NOT a problem in Shatranj, where the Elephants on the first rank can NEVER attack the unprotected Pawns on the seventh rank. And I for one refuse to worry about the threat of a Knight taking four moves to cross the board and capture an undefended Pawn.

I've never really paid attention to this game before. The name and the description both suggest that this game is supposed to be an improvement over Grand Chess. But, in Humpty Dumpty's sense of the word, there is no glory on this page. None of Kevin Scanlon's arguments for his changes to Grand Chess are convincing. (1) Making stalemate a win does not maximize the logical consistency of the game. This claim is empty sophistry, using important sounding words to describe something of no significance. The only way in which making stalemate a win maximizes consistency is by making the winning condition consistent with the alternate winning condition of capturing the King. (2) Likewise, how is the elimination of en passant supposed to make the game more consistent? If we follow Scanlon's logic to its conclusion, every piece will move the same in a fully consistent game, and we may as well play Checkers. En passant exists in Chess to keep Pawns from bypassing each other. Other pieces don't need the power, because they will have other opportunities to capture Pawns that pass by on a double move. (3) The new array leaves a Pawn unprotected. This is not good for a game with powerful compound pieces. In conclusion, I remain unconvinced that this game is grander than Grand Chess.