Alternatives to Classical Chess

@Zane2007 said in #22:
> It seems that preferences are on the side of Chess960. It's also my favorite alternative!

I think rather preferences are divided. As a chess coach in a school I've already organized some Reform Chess tourneys on 8x6 boards.

This variant of chess is very fun.
A screen is placed in the middle, dividing each side of the board.
The players then can place their chessmen in any position they wish, on their side.
The screen is lifted and the game begins.
Kinda like starting out in middle game.
Castling is allowed if the king and rook are in their normal chess positions.
No En passant.
It was fun coming up with various starting positions, that were effective.
Try it, fun to play! - :]

@Prophiscient said in #30:
> There are plenty of strong players in favor of 960, including GMs and top players in the world.

This might not be enough for adoption. It might actually be compatible with the idea that 960 Random is for already experienced standard players. Therefore cutting the base of the iceberg of amateur chess culture from which future experiences players might appear.

It seems that it might also be the reason for Random not being such a problem for some. The learning barrier of potential of standard being replaced by another in 960. No way to build a real geometric opening theory that could be position information based not move sequence based (the moves would be falling off the tree transcending positional information richer theory, now that controllable back-ranks as hyper-angles could be studied and intuition around them timely sampled and resampled (same setups often enough, different paths, with different outcomes, of course).

That would be the alternative to deep sequence memorization race. The knowledge would be already about width, and not dependent on the path.. Transposition would not be a nightmare anymore.. as the position information would be the rational basis of opening navigation. advance long sequence preparation at the expense of diversity of opening early on, would not be a dominating competition strategy..

My hunch. Hyper-angles in big chess space. including backranks intial conditions. like looking a new object not sure what it does, do you keep looking at it always from the top only? or do you make it spins randomly insteant. are these the only 2 point of view available?

@dboing said in #33:
> This might not be enough for adoption. It might actually be compatible with the idea that 960 Random is for already experienced standard players. Therefore cutting the base of the iceberg of amateur chess culture from which future experiences players might appear.

I don't disagree. That wasn't my argument for why we should adopt Chess960. I was just refuting @CheerUpChess-Youtube's claim that Chess960 is for weak players. It might actually be for stronger players.

Although, I don't think Chess960 would alienate weak players. Instead we would have to change how we approach teaching new players. Instead of teaching them familiarity and memorization, we need to teach them how to identify weaknesses in a starting position, how to fix their weaknesses, and how to exploit their opponent's.

And again, the basics still apply. Piece development, king safety, pawn structure, etc.

> It seems that it might also be the reason for Random not being such a problem for some. The learning barrier of potential of standard being replaced by another in 960. No way to build a real geometric opening theory can could be position information based not move sequence based (the moves would be falling off the tree transcending positional information richer theory, now that controllable backrank hyper-angles could be studies and intuition around them timely sampled and resampled (same setups often enough, different paths, with different outcomes, of course).
>
> That would be the alternative to deep sequence memorization race. The knowledge would be already about width, and not dependent on the path.. Transposition would not be a nightmare anymore.. as the position information would be the rational basis of opening navigation. advance long sequence preparation at the expense of diversity of opening early on, would not be a dominating competition strategy..
>
> My hunch.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. Move memorization will be replaced with increased importance in other areas, like principles.

@Prophiscient said in #17:
> However, I realized that the castling in 960 is actually great. The castling rules aren't as crazy as it seems.

You're probably right. I haven't tried to learn it properly yet, but I remember at least two times in the events I watched where an elite GM wasn't sure whether it was possible to castle or not, and I guess that stuck in my head. En passant is also a strange move, but probably necessary if pawns can open by moving two squares, whereas castling is dispensable. The more I've thought about it, the more appealing the idea becomes to me. King safety becomes a more complicated strategic element and the variety of choices about that has an impact on the transition into the endgame. I realized that I'm already really interested in games where one side doesn't castle for some reason or makes a king march. Plus in my wild imagination the king seems to have more character, like an Alexander the Great type figure instead of a bunkered general with radio communication lol.

double king chess because you have two lifes

If Enough hands clap, anything would work. Since chess960 is the one getting most claps, I would choose that.

@Professor74 said in #1:
> 1. Chess960
Somehow I find the opening positions in it weird/chaotic. That's why I prefer classical chess.

> 2. Chess18 (uses only the starting positions from Chess960 in which the king and the rooks are placed on the same home squares as in Classical Chess)
Makes sense, a bit of order to chaotic 960 is always a good improvement, but still classical chess seems better.

> 3. No Castling Chess
Hmm... In chess you usually want to build a castle anyway, so I don't see a point to slow down the game by castling in several moves instead of one.

> 4. Reform Chess (boards-size 8x6, 6x8, 9x6, 5x8)
10x10 board is interesting, althoigh something like 5x5 seems to be better for blindfold chess.

> 5. Double-King Chess
Nope

> 6. Double-King Chess960
Nope 960 times

If you are looking for an alternative to classical chess, then I can advise you the following chess variants:

Grand Triple Chess www.chessvariants.com/rules/grandtriplechess
Play live and by correspondence here www.evochess.com/
No dry and lifeless opening theory, just a chess game with hitherto unseen possibilities.

Double Move Double Chess www.chessvariants.com/rules/double-king-chess-8x16
It is enough to connect two chessboards together by adding the rules of two moves plus the original initial arrangement and we have a completely unique version of Double King Chess, which leaves Marseille Chess and Fred Galvin's Double Move Chess far in the past.

@Simonplaysbadchess said in #36:
> double king chess because you have two lifes

Be careful! In Double-King Chess it is only necessary to checkmate one of the two kings.