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'In defense of chess as a party game'

Chess during the medieval era was a very popular parlour game, especially among the upper classes. But by the turn of the seventeenth century it was no longer fashionable. Marilyn Yalom says:
 
'Ironically enough, it may be that the elevation of the chess queen and the bishop to new levels of strength had something to do with the dwindling numbers of female participants. Once those two pieces acquired a greater range of mobility, it took fewer moves, on average, to complete a match. New chess was no longer suited to leisurely encounters between ladies and gentlemen that could last a day or more, with interruptions for eating, drinking, dancing, and singing, or, in more plebian settings, for stirring the pot and nursing the baby. New chess was fast and fierce. A match could be over in a few hours or even a few moves if you didn't pay strict attention. Hands had to be ready to grasp a piece on the board, and not a knee under the table. Chess would no longer tolerate dalliance of any sort.
As chess became less social and more competititive, the professional chess player arrived on the scene. Forget the troubadour chess partner or the attentive lover or even the town Wunderkind who was allowed to take time off after the harvest to play with the local lord. Now there were full-time champions earning their living from arranged matches in princely settings throughout Europe' (Yalom, Birth of the Chess Queen, pp. 228-9).

It is against this backdrop that we must view many chess variants of later date. For instance, certain big board variants (10x10) fulfil the criterion of a slower game suitable for the leisurely parlour. I mention two examples, Paulovits's variant c. 1890 : 
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/paulovitsgame.htm 
and my own Mastodon Chess:
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/mastodon.htm 

To the modern chess players the empty spaces at the flanks must appear like immense deserts where pieces can roam about without seeing much sign of enemy opposition. Such a game can never acquire the 'nerve' of standard chess. But this is a good quality because then we are somehow back at the leisurely parlour game where the technique of moving pieces needn't be that exacting. 

I want to strike a blow for a form of chess which isn't that competitive. The above two big board variants contain many finesses, but if played by strong players they are likely to end in a draw, I suppose. Outside the sporting context this is not disadvantageous. If we want a still slower game then we can turn to 1000 year old Shatranj Kamil, allegedly invented by Timur Lenk. There are also slow standard board variants, like Thai Chess (Makruk).

The conclusion is that it's much up to the character of the game and its rules if a game is to become a popular social occupation. Chess had acquired an immense romantic status during the medieval era, but now there is almost nothing left of this. During the 19th century, people could still be seen playing chess in a lounge, smoking a cigar, sipping from a glass of cognac. But today chess is merely professional. Occasional park players also want money.

Mats