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As far as "hottest" variants, sadly I'm not sure the site generates
enough traffic, or arguably as much traffic as it could.

The overwhelming popularity of chess dot com (and chess itself of course)
shows that a potential audience type is there. However there seems to be a
dogmatism in the FIDE community.

I proposed what was I viewed was a logical refinement to the stalemate rule
on the site forum (stalemate with pieces vs a bare king is a win) and was
universally shot down.

I'm not sure a "killer app" for chess variants is even possible, however
the modest popularity of certain variants such Fischer Random Chess at
least shows the most likely way of achieving it-games that evolve the chess
concept with some additional mechanic at low cost to rule complexity or
game symmetry, rather than a mere sideways alternation of it.