Comments by ChessShogi

The main reason I gave the name "Decimal Chess" to this variant  because I did not find any Chess variant that went by that name. I  wanted to avoid stealing the name of another game and including any part of my name when naming the game. I wanted to give the game a name that referenced the size of the board, but I couldn't a good alternative. I will put a note on the page to avoid confusion until I decide on an alternative.

When I designed Yangsi, I did so with the principles in Fergus Duniho's On Designing Good Chess Variants in mind. I have actually playtested this game several times. The people I played the game with all thought it was fun and very playable. I remember one particularly enjoyable game I played where I had a bare King and my opponent had a king and two pawns. That game ended in a draw via stalemate.

The name has been finalized (finally!). Many thanks to H. G. Muller for suggesting the name.

Increasing the board size does give the pieces more freedom of movement, Mr. Duniho, but it also does another thing - it makes it harder to keep track of everything. You yourself have stated this in your article "On Designing Good Chess Variants" in the section "Don't make your game too small or too large."

"Small games can finish too quickly, and large games can last too long. Note that the three classics are on moderate sized boards, ranging in size from 8x8 for Chess to 9x10 for Xiang Qi. 10x10 has proven a good size for many games, though 12x12 and up might be too large. I have recently (November 2009) created a 12x12 variant called Gross Chess. To some extent, this is an experiment with a board of this size. The only pieces it adds have been tried and tested in other variants, which allows the game to be a test mainly of the increased board size. Games against Zillions of Games suggest that the game is enjoyable but the larger size makes it harder to keep track of everything. I haven't yet won a game against Zillions without taking back moves. I have played a couple games on Game Courier, drawing one game and losing the other."

As for your comments on piece density, I don't think that cramming the pieces together within a 10x10 space will create too many problems. Kevin Pacey's Sac Chess also has a piece density of 60% at the start of the game, and is one of the top 50 games on Game Courier.

Note to editors: The site name for this page is incorrect. It should be https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/futashikana-shogi instead of https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/dacimal-chess. As this page hasn't been approved yet, the change can be made without any trouble.