Single Comment

@ Jarid:

The alfil+ferz compound piece (Ferfil or Modern Elephant) has a feature that is at least somewhat interesting, perhaps, namely that part of it's move capability is to leap, which can show to advantage in many positions before a wide open endgame might arise, where it often could indeed effectively be an inferior bishop (though even from diagonally adjacent to its king, it can leap over said king, which might make a difference occasionally).

Earlier in this thread, I think, I posted that I thought a Next Chess (if a feasible one is even possible that meets nearly all arguably desirable criteria that chess does) would take at least 100 years before replacing chess in popularity, due to need at that time, and so inventing or agreeing on the best Next Chess candidate(s) would be a generational project that we wouldn't see come to fruition in our lifetimes. To be fair to the idea of faster change though, top level chess led the way in switching tournament chess generally to play using digital clocks (also with faster time controls becoming the standard), and the related ending of adjourning games before playing them to completion. The latter may have also had to do with strong computer engines (or endgame tablebases), but I'm not sure. Those engines are also helping to exhaust chess opening theory at an accelerating rate (however note exhausted 8x8 Checkers still lives on competitively, perhaps in rather pale fashion though). A problem for a Next Chess is, will its correctly interesting opening possibilities be anywhere near as rich as for chess itself, even if there are more pieces and squares in such a game (such as even for my massive 10x10, 60 piece units Sac Chess game, with its compound pieces theme, which may not be ideal for young children, at least).

@ Aurelian:

I did not read your post if it ended up being lost or deleted, but my guess would be that CVP editorial policy might go against any posts that have too little percentage of content related to the subject of a thread, namely whatever it is supposed to have to do with chess variants (such as their future). Also, any extra level of passion or controversy a given poster might happen to convey might prove unwelcome to an editor, though again I did not see your missing post.