Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

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.

As David, I´m also mathematician, and I also prefer avoid claims of
'maximal logical consistency', by various reasons, but, fundamentally,
because I don´t understand what exactly it means.

Once again, I'll put my foot in my mouth up to my shoulder.
David, I think I see what you're doing. Here I am. This name is a little
tacky. But, reading the rules, I see Mr. Scanlon is paying homage to Grand
Chess in his own way. 
Gary and I have agreed, in an exchange of private emails, that people
might take me too seriously. I mention this partly for completeness, but
mostly because I wish to copy 1 sentence from my email to Gary for
Christine - 'As far as Christine, without talking to her, I'd bet she
has no such animal as a GS game to come out, it's most likely her sense
of humor coming out.' Hah! Got you on the first try! :)
Roberto, you have the best line about the rules of this game. Thank you.
Terms like maximum logical consistancy always worry me. I'm glad others
are bothered, too.
To finish seriously, there may be no legal problem with names like More
Granderer Chess II, I'm not up on copyright law. But as a community, this
group can exert social pressure, fairly or unfairly. What are the community
standards, and what is fair?

Joe wrote, in part, 'But, reading the rules, I see Mr. Scanlon is paying
homage to Grand Chess in his own way.'  

GKG response: But I see that Mr. Scanlon wrote: 'Despite its admittedly
minor aesthetic and functional flaws...[refering to Grand Chess] then adds
'Grand Chess is easily the best and most playable reinvention of Chess I
have ever seen.'  

So, he is stating that it has minor aesthetic and functional flaws; and is
elswhere stating that he has taken this game and improved it.... has taken
the Grand Chess and made it Grander Chess, aye, there's the rub.

Okay, Gary, I was trying to be nice and let him down easy. A. O. Myers does
a discussion of Grander Chess (first item under See Also) in which he
disagrees with K. Scanlon's elimination of en passant and treatment of
stalemate, but agrees with the new piece placement. Now, I also think en
passant should stay. And if there is a problem with stalemate, then give
the stalemater 2/3 of a point and the stalematee 1/3. That satisfies my
sense of what feels right. I'd even take a little issue with piece
placement, as the knights are, in both variants, pushed farther away from
the middle, thus weakening them somewhat, but I don't see an alternative
that's better or even as good as the current knight placement. (Obviously
I use the same setup in GS.) Finally, I don't believe the name is
justified. Fergus makes excellent points and sense in his comments. Mr.
Scanlon tried, but the group consensus is that he obviously did not
succeed. What he did, at most, was create a modest variant of Grand Chess
with a most immodest name. 
Of course, that puts many of us, perhaps me especially, at risk for our
games' names.

This 1999 stalemate rule was used a year later in Peter Hatch's Fantasy Grand Chess. Now I have no objection to carefully defined Stalemate Victory conditions. I just finished adding a new diagram to the Notes section of my old game Jumping Knights Chess, which has some very strange stalemate wins. While reading the Grand Chess page, I noticed the following comment by Johnny Luken [2015-04-13].

"Fair points, but I'm really talking about more extreme cases.

Is a stalemated king vs 3 queens a legitimate draw? I don't so.

The only counterargument to that is "gee well the other player shouldn't so sloppy as to let the king be stalemated." But to me thats a moot point. Dominant player shouldn't be obligated to give the weaker player a legal move."

White Bishop to (c1) is a legal move in a legal position. Time for people to stop throwing words at this (perceived) problem and simply choose one of three possible outcomes here: "1-0" or "1/2-1/2" or "0-1". Incidentally, if this was a position in a Grand Chess game, the Black Pawn would still be outside its promotion zone.

[EDIT 2023-09-04] Positions like this one need to be studied before inventing new rules for chess. I just finished posting a Comment to High Chess, with a similar diagram.