Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

That was the (once patented) 10x8 variant with the forbidden word, the mentioning of which will cause your comment to be promptly erased on this website.

Ad I think it is a bit of an exaggeration to say there are hundreds variants here 'based on Capablanca Chess'. In fact Capablaca Chess was not new, and used the same board and pieces as Carrera Chess, which predates it by several ceturies. It is true there are several sub-variants of 10x8 Chess with BN and RN compounds added to FIDE (Capablanca, Bird, Carrera, Embassy, Schoolbook, the unspeakable one), but I am not sure that there are more than a dozen. And if starting from another array counts, then surely orthodox Chess must be the most popular, through the 960 different 'variants' it has through Chess960. Sometimes the 10x8 variants differ in castling rules, though.

It is true that RN ad BN are the most popular pieces in modern western chess variants, but having (one of) these doesn't really make a game a variant of Capablaca Chess.

To HG Muller

This is very intriguing - a forbidden word with regard to a Chess game - extraordinary, but I'll let this be, at least I seem to be right that there was talk of something.....

.....I always say Capablanca chess although I do know there were earler similar games like it, but thanks for letting me know this anyway.....

.....I agree It does seem to be an exaggeration that there are hundreds of Capablanca type games on the site, but although I am stating this from memory I'm sure that was what someone said, though years ago; I wonder how many games there are in total on the site now - does this run into thousands.....

.....Chess 960:  I think randomisation is a technique rather than really being seperate games and this technique could probably be applied to numerous Chess games - I don't really use it on any of my own games though.....

There have been many variants of Capablanca over the centuries, athough mostly in the last 20 years, probably about a dozen.  But that is no indication of popularity, as most were played little if ever.  In my opinion, the issue is that the game just isn't very good.  It is a logical extension, but that doesn't mean it will be a great game, even if you do find the perfect arrangement of pieces.

To G. Strong

Thank-you for an interesting reply  - I do in fact rather like the game, but more to the point is that Capablanca himself thought it much better than Western chess and of course his opinion as a world champion must carry weight, though no doubt he had a little bias towards his own game.....

.....I can only hazard a guess that Capablanca liked the great tactical scope that the game seems to give whilst also having the possibility after (if) exchanges of some or all of the very strong pieces of simplifying into something akin to Western chess, so then you don't lose Western chess altogether with it  - two games for the price of one ? - indeed this is why I like it.....

.....of course it is all opinion on games on this site and only Western and Chinese chess (perhaps Shogi as well) are popular on a really huge scale, but I personally would put Capablanca chess high up on the ranking of games, not that I've tried out all the thousands (?) of games here - who has.