Omnia Nihilo wrote on Fri, Apr 20, 2018 11:34 AM UTC:
I think minor variants with different pieces would have a better shot at becoming popular. Games like Shako or even Hannibal chess seem like good candidates. Weird shapes like hexagons or too many exotic pieces aren't likely to catch on fast; while those two games just have cannons, alfils, etc. Pieces that are simple enough to learn, but provide a significant change that might interest people. And given how small the changes have been historically it seems to fit. Look at chaturanga vs regular chess, or shatranj. Even Xiangqi and Shogi aren't massively big in terms of a change. Historically chess and games in general seem to change very slowly with a few slight modifications that people find useful. Like the alfils turning into bishops rather than being gimped and only touching 8 squares on a board.
And change is likely to be slower because there is an "orthodox" chess. It isn't like the old days where someone forgetting a rule or house ruling the game (in this case chess) slowly over time will branch off into its own thing and become a different game. People can just look it up now and information travels faster. And there aren't any real issues in chess that bug enough people for a change to catch on. The average person who plays chess isn't a grandmaster who knows the most precise moves or memorized openings a ton and faces any real annoyance to their gameplay. Whereas the weakness of the alfil would spur people on to change it. But what piece is really weak in chess? Aside from high level play, there is no real gameplay weakness to speed up the desire for change among your average Joe sitting down to play a game. Yeah, at high level play this results in a lot of draws, and it may bore people who watch it, but most people aren't sitting around firing up their engines and seeing those underlying flaws. They're just playing the game or watching it and it's still fresh to them.
Standard chess is just too well balanced for there to be some outcry against a weak or gimped piece like with shatranj and such and there aren't enough people who know chess like an engine and find the game dull. Change rarely happens for the sake of it. And I'm just not seeing what would make chess change in any significant way when chess has barely changed from Shatranj, and that was barely, if at all, changed from Chaturanga.
I think minor variants with different pieces would have a better shot at becoming popular. Games like Shako or even Hannibal chess seem like good candidates. Weird shapes like hexagons or too many exotic pieces aren't likely to catch on fast; while those two games just have cannons, alfils, etc. Pieces that are simple enough to learn, but provide a significant change that might interest people. And given how small the changes have been historically it seems to fit. Look at chaturanga vs regular chess, or shatranj. Even Xiangqi and Shogi aren't massively big in terms of a change. Historically chess and games in general seem to change very slowly with a few slight modifications that people find useful. Like the alfils turning into bishops rather than being gimped and only touching 8 squares on a board.
And change is likely to be slower because there is an "orthodox" chess. It isn't like the old days where someone forgetting a rule or house ruling the game (in this case chess) slowly over time will branch off into its own thing and become a different game. People can just look it up now and information travels faster. And there aren't any real issues in chess that bug enough people for a change to catch on. The average person who plays chess isn't a grandmaster who knows the most precise moves or memorized openings a ton and faces any real annoyance to their gameplay. Whereas the weakness of the alfil would spur people on to change it. But what piece is really weak in chess? Aside from high level play, there is no real gameplay weakness to speed up the desire for change among your average Joe sitting down to play a game. Yeah, at high level play this results in a lot of draws, and it may bore people who watch it, but most people aren't sitting around firing up their engines and seeing those underlying flaws. They're just playing the game or watching it and it's still fresh to them.
Standard chess is just too well balanced for there to be some outcry against a weak or gimped piece like with shatranj and such and there aren't enough people who know chess like an engine and find the game dull. Change rarely happens for the sake of it. And I'm just not seeing what would make chess change in any significant way when chess has barely changed from Shatranj, and that was barely, if at all, changed from Chaturanga.