Single Comment

With regard to the business side of variant chess.  Yes, the actual market for chess variants is currently very small, but no, the potential market is very large.  Hundreds of millions of people play chess and are very enthusiastic about the game and I am sure a good percentage of these players would find preferred games amongst variant chess; unfortunately most (virtually all?) are not aware of alternative variant games and this, I think, is what is holding back progress. How to solve this problem I do not know, but I think it is necessary to gain the attention of large numbers of players - If, for example, the next edition of the largest selling chess software, Chessmaster, were to include a few good variants properly programmed then this might start some momentum.  There are other possibilities but they would require the interest of the right person(s) and this is very difficult to bring about.

G. Nicholls