Single Comment

@ H.G.:

Regarding CVs with a large body of opening theory, it would seem it's tough to avoid that if the relative popularity of a CV is to be an important criteria for inclusion in a CVs world championship event. Mind Sports abstract games competitions include the big 3 classic CVs (chess, shogi and chinese chess), and the organizers must have considered the edge some players might have over others in playing 1 or more of these 3 CVs (although the number is very small, being just 3 games, which may allow participants some time to bone up on opening theory of up to all 3 of these CVs, if necessary).

Regarding Makruk, I had the impression it was a largely regional CV, in a way moreso than shogi (or any of the other CVs on my suggested list of 10 CVs), but I am far from sure. On a personal note, when I glanced at Makruk's wiki, I found the rules a bit elaborate to follow, with regard to the draw result conditions (though chess has some, albeit rarely arising, special drawing case rules, too). I would hope a CV would be played by, say, at least 0.5 million people to be deemed indisputably popular enough even for Mind Sports, which I saw included Renju, which is a more interesting form of Go Moku. That may currently rule out something as interesting as Circular Chess, but I recall Glinski's Hexagonal Chess at least at one time had something like 0.5 million playing. The first two links below include popularity figures for the games in question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makruk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_chess#Gliński's_hexagonal_chess

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renju

[edit: The Oriental Variants link on chessvariants.com, under "Games" in the main menu, seems to have quite a fair number of variants that are at least remotely like Chinese Chess, especially if something like Storm the Ivory Tower is counted, though I suspect few have any truly significant degree of popularity:]

Xiangqi Based Variants

@ Aurelian: At the moment chess has seperate world events for computer vs. computer contests, and maybe still once in a while there are Man+Machine vs. Man+Machine contests. The last I heard of Man vs Machine, the machine side was giving odds in matches to make things more interesting - including the machine having less time to think. As far as any relatively new CV, even, having a similar contest, I think it won't take too long before a reasonably well programmed/self-teaching machine would need to give odds to the best human, too.

@ Everyone: A fresh idea of mine that also may seem rather unrealistic (at the moment, anyway) is for chessvariants.com, arguably the main CV website on the internet, to simply run an annual world CVs championship tournament of its own and then declare the winner to be world CVs champion for that year. Obstacles could include: 1) how to distinguish ourselves from any other website or offline organization later claiming to do the same; 2) how to try to take any anti-cheating measures, if the honour of the title is to be taken very seriously (one measure might be to play just newer or obscure CVs in such an event, to try to more easily avoid the chance of any undetected CV engine assistance, in spite of what I wrote above in my reply to H.G. re: popularity of CVs selected may matter); 3) at some point, how to provide a prize ($, or a trophy, or CV product[s] of some sort, or simply a news story in any media that will take notice) - any entry fee for this type of event may help; 4) how to have enough people playing on Game Courier, compared to some of the other possibly more active CVs (or chess+CVs) servers or play-by-mail sites out there. All in all, this may be a tall order, though so may be trying to get the attention of the already established and well organized Mind Sorts organization, if that were ever to be tried.