Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

Hi Paul

Testing your variant may have revealed much about it to you, so that's a good start......

During my testing, a strange-looking endgame position came up and I thought I could tweak it just a bit to become the very first Chivalry, Graveyard Edition problem position. It demonstrates a few key properties of this variant.

(Btw, I like 'memorial squares' better than 'plague squares' because it fits in with the chivalry nature of the game, that is, any piece would rather be killed than dishonor those who perished in the battle).

So here's a position in which you must replace all Black pawns with trees (remember, I used pine trees from hobby railroad kits as memorial markers). There is one exception: the d7 Black Pawn is actually a Black Pawn.

Also, the White Knight is actually a White Champion, so in a proper diagram, its icon would have the shield-and-cross to indicate that. Also, I'm limited to showing an 8x8 board, but there could be 2 extra ranks on the top end of the board and 2 extra files on right side of the board and it wouldn't influence anything, not even the move notation I'll give for the solution.

So Black has one Pawn on d7, the other Black Pawns in the diagram are all trees / memorials which do not move. An interesting property of Chivalry is that King and Champion can checkmate lone King. It takes a while to do it especially on a 10x10 board, but it can be done (likewise with King and ArchBishop against lone King). It may be that with larger board, 50-move draw rule may have to be extended a bit -- maybe 60-move rule.

What this means here is that Black is likely to lose eventually even should he succeed in taking White's Pawns. But the actual optimal win sequence is very instructive for this variant.

You must remember that I made stalemate a LOSS for the side in stalemate. So this problem is White to play and mate in 4, and is this case, 'mate' means either checkmate or stalemate.




So again, all Black Pawns are trees / memorials except d7 (actual Black Pawn), meaning they do not move and cannot be passed over except by Knight and Champion. It's White to move, and there is a forced win for White... but how many moves will it take with best play from Black?
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Ok, so here it is:

1. Kb7

This already illustrates something: Black's King cannot escape out from the trees via b3 and c2, NOR by a2 and b1! The White Champion covers ALL of those squares (remember, Champion moves like a Knight and a King, but in Chivalry which is the 10x10 board version, the Champion has the additional 2x3 and 3x2 L-shaped moves.

1. ... Ka4

Also possible are 1.... Ka5 and 1.... Pd7xc6, lets ignore them for the moment.

2. Pb6!

This illustrates that when a Pawn in Chivalry, Graveyard Edition is blocked by a Memorial (and only by a Memorial, not by any opposing Pawn or Piece), it is entitled to move one square to either side, even if doing so cannot lead to forward progress later on (that is, the Pawn is totally blockaded from forward progress by Memorials).

Here, the move takes away any move for Black's Pawn on d7 which leads to....

2. ... Kb4 or Ka5 or Ka3

These are the only possible moves. They all lead to the same fate, but one of them gives Black extra moves of survival.

3. Cc2

If the Black King was moved to a3 or b4, then this move is giving check. The King on a3 being moved 3....a2 means White plays 4.Ka6 for win by stalemate. The King on a3 or b4 or a5 being moved 3....Ka4 also gives 4.Ka6 for win by stalemate. And finally, the King on b4 or a5 being moved 3....Kb5 leads to 4.Cb3 for win by stalemate. All these lines have White winning by stalemate in 4 moves or less.

However, if the Black King had moved 2....Kb4 it could now be moved 3....Ka5. This offers Black more moves of life:

3....Ka5 4.Ca1! (not 4.Cb3+ 5.Kb5 and the White Champion has no good continuation)

Now Black has 3 possible King moves.

(i) 4....Kb5 5.Cb3. 1-0 by stalemate

(ii) 4....Kb4 5.Ka6 and now either

(a) 5....Ka4 6.Ca2 1-0 by stalemate
(b) 5....Ka3 6.Ka5 1-0 by stalemate

(iii) 4....Ka4 5.Ka6 and now either

(a) 5....Ka3 6.Ka5 1-0 by stalemate
(b) 5....Kb4 6.Ca2+ Ka4 7.b7 1-0 by stalemate.

And that last variation shows, barring any refutation someone may find, White requires 7 moves to win with best play.



Ok, let's look at if Black had played
1....Ka5

White still plays the sideways move
2.Pb6!

Black can only move his King, to either a4 or b4. If Black plays it to b4, then White replies with 3.Cc2 and that line has already been covered above. So now let's look at
2.... Ka4

Here White is being given the opportunity to play
3.Ka6

which leaves Black with only 2 possible replies:

(i) 3....Ka3 4.Ka5 and it is already 1-0 by stalemate because the White Champion covers both b3 and a2.

(ii) 3....Kb4 4.Cc2+ Ka4 (only move) 5.Ca1 and now either

(a) 5....Ka3 6.Ka5 and it's 1-0 by stalemate, or
(b) 5....Kb4 6.Ca2+ Ka4 7.b7 and it's 1-0 by stalemate

So substituting 1....Ka5 for 1....Ka4 leads to White requiring 7 moves again to win by stalemate. The final possibility is

Finally we have...
1.... d7xc6

This allows White to recapture with

2.Kxc6

Now if Black plays 2....Ka5, he is quickly lost:

2.... Ka5
3.Cb3+ Ka6 (only move)
4.Cb4#

An even quicker loss is
2.... Ka3
3.Kb5 and it's 1-0 by stalemate (the Champion covers the b3 and a2 squares)

So there is left for Black
2.... Ka4

and this is met with

3.Kb6 Kb4 (...Ka3 loses by stalemate to Kb5 as indicated above)
4.Cc2+ Ka4 (only move)
5.d7 and it is 1-0 by stalemate.

So it appears the final answer is that Black can hang on and make White take 7 moves to win by stalemate with best play.

Quite an amazing problem! It shows not only some new complexities involving the range and power of the Champion, but also some intricacies caused by memorial squares and the rare sideways Pawn move.

And in addition, it shows that changing the stalemate rule to a loss for the side stalemated not only avoids long, drawn-out endgames where the vastly superior side has to avoid stalemate and sometimes settle for a draw (a terrible, 'cheapo' thing to allow when one side has been outplayed imo), but shows how new and beautiful lines can be found based on forcing the losing side into loss by stalemate.

So here is the full analysis (hopefully no mistakes):

1. Kb7      Ka4

    (1....Ka5 2.Pb6! Ka4
        (2....Kb4 transposes to main line)
     3.Ka6 Kb4
         (3....Ka3 4.Ka5 1-0 stalemate)
     4.Cc2+ Ka4 (only move) 5.Ca1 Kb4
         (5....Ka3 6.Ka5 1-0 stalemate)
     6.Ca2+ Ka4 7.b7 1-0 by stalemate)
         
    (1....d7xc6 2.Kxc6 Ka4
        (2....Ka5 3.Cb3+ Ka6 (only move) 4.Cb4# 1-0)
        (2....Ka3 3.Kb5 1-0 by stalemate)
     3.Kb6 Kb4  
        (3...Ka3 3.Kb5 1-0 stalemate)
     4.Cc2+ Ka4 (only move) 5.d7 1-0 stalemate)
    
2. Pb6!     Kb4

    (2....Ka5 3.Cc2 4.Ka4 
        (4.Kb5 Cb3 1-0 by stalemate)
     Ka6 1-0 by stalemate) 
     
    (2....Ka3 3.Cc2+ Ka4
        (3....Ka2 4.any move  1-0 stalemate)
     4.Ka6 1-0 by stalemate)
     
3. Cc2+     Ka5
4. Ca1!     Ka4

    (4....Kb4 5.Ka6 Ka4
        (5....Ka3 6.Ka5 1-0 stalemate)
     6.Ca2 1-0 stalemate)
     
    (4....Kb5 5.Cb3. 1-0 stalemate)
    
5. Ka6     Kb4

    (5....Ka3 6.Ka5 1-0 stalemate)
    
6. Ca2+    Ka4 
7. b7 1-0 by stalemate

Probably no-one including Kevin will play this out... but I totally enjoyed creating it and documenting it for posterity!

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

Hi Paul

I neglected to mention that The Chess Variants Page allows a contributor to record & diagram fairy chess (or chess) problems, too. Also, there are tons of fairy chess diagram figurine 'sets' to choose from, some with a massive number of (matching) fairy chess piece figurines, which can be used for submitting variants, problems or Game Courier variant's 'presets', for play online, using email (including chess), FYI (in case you were unaware). Below is link to a hexagonal variant of mine (that has a common 3 cell-colour, 91 cells scheme), a submission which used a number of such exotic figurines (including 'flags' to mark cells, 'unicorns', 'hydras'... ); I'm not so sure anyone would be attracted to trying to play this particular variant, but even indisputably whimsical variants may be allowed into the website's giant database of variants:

http://www.chessvariants.com/inventi...exagonal-chess

[edit: Below is an example of a 'set' of fairy chess figurines that may be selected from (without the need to upload graphics) when composing a diagram, say for the setup position when making a submission on the same website (or for a given diagram, this particular set of figurines allows many different types of square/cell markers to be chosen from); if you have trouble seeing all the pieces, it is suggested to switch to a modern browser like Firefox.]

http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/di...&nextrank=0+50

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

I've added a link to my previous post, for anyone who missed it.

[Alan Baljeu]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

I have a variant, strictly-for-fun, that I call Sardines. It's silly, extremely tactical, easy to learn, and if you don't analyze the heck out of it, you can have a few fun games with a friend. (I bet a computer could find a forced mate, but that would defeat the point.)

Rules:
1. Follow all the rules of chess, unless otherwise stated.
2. Use an 8 wide by 4 deep chess board. In other words, remove the middle 4 rows of a normal board.
3. Pawns don't give check. Pawns do however get the double first move, which means, if the way is clear they can promote on that initial move.

Example game:
1. Nxf3 Kxf3? (this is not moving into check because pawns don't check!)
2. e2xd3+ (discovered) e3-e2?? (Ke4 was better)
3. Qxe2++

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

I have a variant, strictly-for-fun, that I call Sardines. It's silly, extremely tactical, easy to learn, and if you don't analyze the heck out of it, you can have a few fun games with a friend. (I bet a computer could find a forced mate, but that would defeat the point.)

Rules:
1. Follow all the rules of chess, unless otherwise stated.
2. Use an 8 wide by 4 deep chess board. In other words, remove the middle 4 rows of a normal board.
3. Pawns don't give check. Pawns do however get the double first move, which means, if the way is clear they can promote on that initial move.

Example game:
1. Nxf3 Kxf3? (this is not moving into check because pawns don't check!)
2. e2xd3+ (discovered) e3-e2?? (Ke4 was better)
3. Qxe2++

Perhaps it's not so silly, Alan! The Pawns-don't-give-check idea is a very creative one that makes this game work. Its weakness is that the first-move advantage is pretty much decisive. White should never lose.

Given that, one way to play this game would be a 2-game match. So in the first game, Player A is White and let's say wins in 24 moves. That gives 24 points to his opponent. Then they switch colors. So in Game 2 Player B wins with White, but it takes her only 22 moves. Player B would win the match 24-22.

If either player only draws with White, the player with Black earns say 100 points. And a loss with White gives say 200 points to the player with Black.

With regards to a computer engine finding a forced mate: it appears it might have to be quite a long one.

I modified my C++ chess engine to play this version (this only required changing the board, changing the opening setup, and removing checking moves from Pawns, and this was all trivial because of my program design being flexible at the expense of the kind of speed one would get with commercial engines).

My engine can find, in reasonable time, forced mates going several plies deep in regular chess (I've tested it with many chess problems). So I gave each side 2 minutes per move, and started it up. I really wondered if it would announce mate in 6 or something.

But no, it in fact played quite a game. White was up between 1 and 2 Pawns in evaluation score right from the opening position, and that hardly changed for first 40 plies or so. But eventually White's advantage grew.... here are the moves:

 1. Pb2xc3      Pd3xc2
 2. Pc3xd4=Q+   Ke4xd4
 3. Ng1xf3+     Kd4-e4
 4. Pf2xg3      Ph3xg2
 5. Nb1-c3+     Ke4-d3
 6. Pg4xh4=Q    Pg2xh1=Q
 7. Qh4xg4      Kd3xc3
 8. Bc1xa3      Pc2xd1=Q+
 9. Ra1xd1      Nb4-c2+
10. Ke1-f2      Pb3xa2
11. Qg4xf4      Bc4xe2
12. Bf1xe2      Ra4xf4
13. Rd1xh1      Pe3xd2
14. Ph2-h3      Nc2xa3
15. Kf2-g3      Rf4-e4
16. Rh1-a1      Na3-b1
17. Ra1xa2      Re4xe2
18. Ra2xd2      Nb1xd2
19. Ph3-h4=Q    Nd2-e4+
20. Kg3-h3      Kc3-d3
21. Qh4-f4      Kd3-c4
22. Nf3-g1      Re2-e1
23. Kh3-g2      Kc4-c3
24. Qf4-f3+     Kc3-c2
25. Ng1-e2      Kc2-d2
26. Ne2-d4      Re1-e3
27. Nd4-b3+     Kd2-d3
28. Qf3-d1+     Kd3-c4
29. Nb3-c1      Re3-g3+
30. Kg2-f1      Ne4-d2+
31. Kf1-e2      

   (31.Qxd2?? and Black's Rook 
   can check on g1: the Rook 
   can't be taken because Black would 
   be in stalemate. Thus the King goes 
   to the 2nd rank, Black checks with 
   the Rook again and exchanges Rook 
   for Queen, draw.)

31. ...         Nd2-b3
32. Qd2-c2+     Rg3-c3
33. Qc2-e4+     Nb3-d4
34. Ke2-d2      Rc3-a3
35. Kd2-f1      Ra3-f3
36. Nc1-e2      Rf3-d3+
37. Kd1-c1      Rd3-h3

   Black cannot save the Knight, 
   and the defence is over.
   
38. Ne2xd4      Rh3-h1+
39. Kc1-c2      Rh1-c1+

   (39....Rh1-h2+ 40.Ne2#)
   
40. Kc2xc1      Kc4-c3
41. Nd4-c2      Kc3-b3
42. Qe4-d3+     Kb3-a2
43. Qd3-a3#

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

For anyone's info: After a lull, someone new (playing White) decided to play a game of my 10x10, 60 piece Sac Chess variant, on The Chess Variants Page, using the Play By Mail system Game Courier (he is the 4th person to ever try a game of it vs. another person, afaik). Below is a link to the gamescore (with diagram) as it stands so far; it's hard to know if White should have any significant advantage in Sac Chess, but in this game White has played conservatively so far, in sort of a double king pawn game. It also looks like some sort of an email time control is being used:

http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/pl...m-2016-180-161

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

For anyone's info:

From Chess.com circa 2016, here's part of a post by Dr. H.G. Muller, partly
re: Sac Chess:

"...I happen to host a package of WinBoard + Sjaak II at
http://hgm.nubati.net/SacChess.zip . In that package I have already
pre-configured WinBoard to start up with (a very recent version of) Sjaak
II as engine. It starts up playing a variant 'Sac Chess', which is defined
in the variants.txt file, but you can then switch it to another variant
through WinBoard's New Variant menu. So I would strongly recommend using
that package. If you put your own variant definition into the variant.txt
file of that package (not too much at the end, as that WinBoard has only
room for displaying nine engine-defined variants), you should see a radio
button for selecting it in the New Variant dialog."

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

Re: Sac Chess (and other variants):

Note that physical 10x10 boards are in modern use, e.g. try searching "10x10 Draughts" on Amazon.ca; there are some international sellers of physical fairy chess pieces, at the least, but in a pinch ones can be improvised, e.g. using elastics around extra chess set(s') pieces, or even coins. As an aside, there might be a significant market for manufacturers of assorted fairy chess pieces sold individually, and/or packed as a customized set according to a customer's order. In the meantime here's a somewhat dated link re: how to make a 'chess variant construction set':

http://www.chessvariants.com/crafts....ction-set.html

P.S: Any aspiring manufacturer of assorted fairy chess pieces might wish to decide which types of fairy pieces to make the most of during production, some being more popular than others (e.g. due to being in play in more than one variant game, especially popular games). The possible kinds and names of fairy pieces are limitless, with more being invented (if not commonly used) all the time. Some could be made from scratch as unique special order pieces, if a customer is willing to wait & may more for them. Here's a link re: fairy pieces, which provides many examples of them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_chess_piece

P.P.S.: here's a link to one manufacturer of any customer's design of chess pieces (or boards, probably), albeit in China, except it appears 'customer' must be a company:

http://www.cnchess.com/en/customized_chess.html

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

Thought I'd bump up this thread, in case the info I added to my previous post with edits is useful or interesting to anyone.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

Thought I'd bump up this thread, in case the info I added to my previous post with edits is useful or interesting to anyone.

Kevin, did you ever play much of Marseillais Chess?

The balanced version, where White moves 1 move, then each player gets 2 moves, both of which may be captures, and both of which may be moving the same piece. But if your King is in check, you must get it out of check on your first of 2 moves. And if you give check on 1st move, you forego 2nd move.

Asking after I saw thread here about short games.... most Marseillais games tend to be short, although long games are possible. The opening play seems to be very tricky.

I haven't done a truly exhaustive search, but my rudimentary search is not giving me any extensive records of recorded games. Given the tricky nature of the openings, I'm surprised someone hasn't done some deep research on this..... maybe I just haven't found it yet.

I've modified my chess engine to play this variant.... played 4 games so far, and the last one went 32 moves which is very long for this variant. It was very fascinating!

I think Black's advantage of first double-move seems to outweigh advantage of first overall move.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

Hi Paul

Fwiw, the closest thing that I played was Progressive Chess, decades ago. I seem to recall Hugh Brodie once posted that he thought that in that game Black had a slight edge out of the opening, if he played a Pirc setup (...d6 + ...Nf6 right off the bat, I suppose). One thing I learned on The Chess Variants Page website though is that there is more than one version of the game's rules, coming from different nations:

http://www.chessvariants.com/multimo...ogressive.html

Anyway, also from the same website, here are the rules etc. of Marseillais Chess, including some old recorded games:

http://www.chessvariants.com/multimo.../marseill.html

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

For anyone's information, for 2016, the webmaster informs me that the main site for chessvariants.com has been getting in the neighborhood of 50,000 unique visitors each month, with something in the neighborhood of 80,000 visits each month.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

In trying to speculate about how many people worldwide might be inclined to take up almost any sort of chess variant(s) seriously, if an organization for such existed (aside from chess, shogi, Chinese chess, Thai chess or Korean chess, which have their own organizations), I came up with a way to try to estimate the total number of people (x) who may play or enjoy such variants worldwide (i.e. seriously or not so seriously, at the moment at least). The answer's probably off by a lot, but my calculation may be worth a chuckle:

There's about 605,000,000 people who play chess worldwide (seriously or otherwise) according to FIDE. Let's say that almost all people who take up chess variants first learn how to play chess. The number of serious chessplayers with FIDE ratings, alone, was about 170,000 circa 2013, I saw on the web.

Let's assume that most of the people worldwide who are serious about chess variants are members on chessvariants.com (which has pages in languages besides English), i.e. about 3,400 currently. From that I can now solve for x in an equation where

170,000/605,000,000 = 3400/x

to obtain the answer that x = 12,100,000 people worldwide who take chess variants seriously or just for fun at present. Note around 40% of the world population has an internet connection today, so perhaps my estimate may not be far off even considering that.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

In trying to speculate about how many people worldwide might be inclined to take up almost any sort of chess variant(s) seriously, if an organization for such existed (aside from chess, shogi, Chinese chess or Korean chess, which have their own organizations), I came up with a way to try to estimate the total number of people (x) who may play or enjoy such variants worldwide (i.e. seriously or not so seriously, at the moment at least). The answer's probably off by a lot, but my calculation may be worth a chuckle:

There's about 605,000,000 people who play chess worldwide (seriously or otherwise) according to FIDE. Let's say that almost all people who take up chess variants first learn how to play chess. The number of serious chessplayers with FIDE ratings, alone, was about 170,000 circa 2013, I saw on the web.

Let's assume that most of the people worldwide who are serious about chess variants are members on chessvariants.com (which has pages in languages besides English), i.e. about 3,400 currently. From that I can now solve for x in an equation where

170,000/605,000,000 = 3400/x

to obtain the answer that x = 12,100,000 people worldwide who take chess variants seriously or just for fun at present. Note around 40% of the world population has an internet connection today, so perhaps my estimate may not be far off even considering that.

That's an interesting approach, but there's another way to look at the 'big picture'.

First, let's define something: what does it mean that 600 million worldwide "play chess"?

Let's assume "play chess" means they know the rules and would play a casual game if there was (1) a willing opponent, (2) nothing better to do with their time, and (3) either a chess set or a chess app readily available.

Notice there's nothing there about ratings or playing a rated game. When you start bringing that stuff in -- clocks, ratings, writing down moves -- the number plunges dramatically. Most of the people that play chess casually know that in a serious chess environment, they would not stand much if any chance of winning. They know that there is no luck element that gives them a prayer of any success.

And then when you add costs -- membership fees, tournament fees, club fees, devoting a whole weekend to an event, devoting hours per week for study -- the number plunges dramatically AGAIN. The vast majority of the 600 million (99.96% roughly) are just not that into chess.

Now the important thing about a specific chess variant is that it could INTRODUCE some element of luck. It could be carefully crafted in such a way that skill was still the overriding decisive factor in games, but luck maybe decided anywhere from 25% to 40% of games. There's a sweet spot somewhere in that range, where it's enough luck-influenced to attract less serious players but not so luck-influenced as to repulse really serious players.

In the poker world, there is a counterpart to this. There is No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em, where the size of bets is only limited to the size of one's stack of chips and which is very luck influenced (maybe more than 90%, although there is no way to measure it AFAIK). And then there is Limit Hold 'Em, in which size of bets is limited. Limit events tend to take longer to finish than No-Limit games, and Limit events are described in general as being more skill-influenced than No-Limit events. Again, no measurements to back that up, just the general consensus of serious poker players.

So which of the two do you think is more popular for major tournament events? It's no contest: No Limit is the preferred by far. It is No-Limit that attracts by far the greater number of entrants, and thus the bigger jackpots. Most No-Limit events are structured such that if you're an unskilled player, you can still play an event and feel confident that you will last at least stay in for the better portion of a day and get to play a lot of hands. Of course, that would require at least a small degree of patience with regards to 'going all-in'. But the bigger attraction is the chance to win life-changing amounts of money.

Lots and lots and LOTS of amateurs play these No-Limit events. They do seem to attract most of the pros as well. That's because poker has always been about luck, and so luck doesn't have the stigma with the pros that a chess variant 90% influenced by luck would have with serious chess players.

(There are also so-called 'sit-n-go' poker events which are not tournaments. At these events, which are always going on at most casinos, it takes many hours of play for a skilled player to eke out a small margin which is dependent on how many unskilled players are also playing.)

But sticking to tournaments... any organization that wanted to make a profit by being the FIDE of some chess variant should pick the right variant: one where an element of luck that could be said to decide as much as 40% of results, and no less than 25% of results, would be ideal. Maybe even 50% could be the max. It would all be approximate, because of there being no way to actually measure it. And this entails the element of risk to anyone trying this out as a business.

What I'm leading up to his this: the number of the 600 million global chess players who COULD BE convinced to start taking a chess variant seriously, if it met the luck conditions I just mentioned and everyone was made aware of this, should be significantly BETTER than the figure you worked out, Kevin. The luck aspect would convince many of them to 'buy in' to tournament events. If the variant was exciting enough to play, and over time people could see that amateurs did win up to 40% of the time against superior pros, maybe even 50%, you should have yourself a successful business assuming you take care of other things like marketing and enticements to keep people interested and keeping operating costs low, as with any business.

I think that if done right and with the right variant, more than 50% of those 600 million could be at one time or another lured into playing tournament events. That's a sizeable market base -- what, about 1/4 of Facebook's numbers?

The only variant discussed here in this thread that MIGHT qualify would be bughouse. It's definitely exciting enough, and variance due to non-skill factors might be above the 25% threshold I am guessing would be the low end. It seems, Kevin, like Bughouse is your passion. This may all be leading up to you trying such an endeavor, even if it just starts out local to your area. You haven't expressed your feelings on that here, and it could be you're not actually in a position to take such a risk. It would have to be carefully planned out, for sure.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Heterodox chess (chess variants) thread 2.0

Hi Paul

I'm not in any position financially, or entirely health-wise, to launch a bughouse venture of the sort you're thinking of, but I do feel bughouse would be one variant that would be a winner in the long term if organized (say by the CFC), and conveniently it doesn't compete much with orthodox 2 player chess IMHO. As always, there's lots of frustration to go around on chesstalk. :)

[edit: Below's a link, including discussion of regularly organized bughouse events, e.g. by the USCF.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughou...Over_the_board

[edit: Regarding my previous post, below's a 2012 demographics report on FIDE's website about adult chess players, fwiw; included are details re: USA. I noticed over half of people who played chess were aged 18-34 in the US taken together with four other nations. Also, I'd note 2012 is at least after the infancy of mobile gaming (Apple app stores first opened 2008).]

https://www.fide.com/component/conte...om-yougov.html