Single Comment

Rich:

I think you overly dramatize the issue of promotions. In normal Chess the
multiple Queen problem has in practice no importance at all. Flipped Rook
is an excellent solution, and in official tournaments one usually simply
grabs a Queen from the guys playing next to you. Bughouse in theory needs
4 additional pieces to represent N,B,R and Q obtained through promotion
(different from their original counterparts, as they revert to Pawns on
capture). In official Bughouse tournaments I participated in, the rules
were such that the promoted Pawns kept the physical shape of a Pawn (to make sure they were passed on as Pawns on capture), and that the players simply had to remember what piece that Pawn represented. (After the promoting player had yelled the name of the piece he was promoting to, which of couse was always Queen.) When playing Bughouse or Crazyhouse on Internet Chess Servers, the players see promoted Pawns represented as the piece they promoted to. So in that case they will have to remember which Queens will revert to Pawns, and which will remain Queens on capture. Crazyhouse is the most played variant on Chess Servers, and I have never heard anyone complain about this state of affairs...

Crazyhouse of course has an even larger problem with equipment, as the
pieces need to change color there. For OTB play you would need two sets,
and keep good accounting to prevent cheating. The Japanese solution to
these problems turns out inacceptable to Western players.

This whole thing is a non-issue, and addressing it is a waste of time.

As to home-made sets: the standard solution is that people use a normal
Chess set, and agree that in the upcoming game Queens represent
Withdrawers, and Knights represent Chameleons, etc. This is only
troublesome to experienced Chess players. There are plenty of low-tech
solutions to this that are within reach of even the most inept. One could
use Draughts chips or stacks of Draughts chips to represent some pieces.
They might have equipmet lying around for other board games they happen to
have. One could use wooden blocks from a building set. One could make paper
cones of two different sizes. People that feel the use of normal Chess men
is too strong  distraction, will find a solution to this that can be
implemented in 5 minutes. If they really think the game is worth a replay,
they will consider more esthetically pleasing solutions that cost money.

It would be nice, though, if a set with four extra pieces (a pair plus two
unique ones), and two Pawns (for each color, so 12 pieces in total) could
be bought. There is a huge practical problem, though: all Pawns of a Chess
set should be equal, or the solution would look too much improvised to be
worth throwing money at. And the precise shape of Pawns as it is in
standard Staunton sets is no doubt protected as intellectual property.

If I were to construct a piece set for Capablanca Chess, I would simply
buy two standard Staunton sets. The Knights of such a set consist of a
horse figure from the neck up, glued to a base. I would cut those lose
from each other, and glue the head on top of an inverted Rook, to
represent the Chancellor. Then I would glue a Bishop on the remaining
Knight base, and make a second cut in the Bishop's head, symmetrically
opposed to the original one, so that the top part (with the 'knob') comes
off. This would represent the Archbishop. So now I have 2 Archbishops, 2
Chancelors, and 8 Pawns (for each color), and I would still be left with
Kings and Queens. These I would decapitate, to make a pair of
undistinctive pieces that could be used as a wildcard. So in fact I would
have made twice as many unorthodox pieces as I needed for Capablanca
Chess, with some Pawns to spare as well. From 3 normal piece sets I would
have made two 'Capablanca+' sets, and could sell the set I did not need.
If I was not interested in playing on a 12-wide board, I could glue two of
the Pawns on a pedestal (e.g. two stacked Draughts chips of judiciously
chosen size, or just a piece cut from a cylindrical wooden stick), and have another pair of exo-pieces (e.g. usable to represent Ferz in Shatranj, or Commoner in Knightmate).