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I've created many Chess Variants. AMA.

Chess variants I have made (listed on ChessVariants.com)

Backwards Stalemate Chess - This is an April Fools joke. It's normal chess played with the board reversed and some pretending that you aren't playing normal chess. Listed here only because it's on the site.

Chess 4.5 - Chess where one players starts making an opening and the second player then picks the color they would prefer from that position.

Chess480 - This is Chess960 with simplified castling rules (there are also several articles I've written regarding why I think these castling rules are better, but with the popularity of Chess960 it's unlikely to become popular.)

Lao Tzu Chess - Double Chess960 (pieces are not mirrors for Black and White) meets Dark Chess and Crazy House (But you can only drop on spaces you can "see".) This is honestly my favorite.

Simplified Chess - Standard FIDE Chess with seven rules removed. Easier to teach and learn, still has depth of play and a unique feel.

Strate-Go Chess - Chess mixed with Stratego. You can see where pieces are but you don't know what pieces are what. King Capture wins.

Victorian Chess - A variant on Capablanca Chess where all the pawns are protected from the opening and the two strongest pieces are moved to the outside of the board (making the game more appealing to normal chess players.)

I have had major input into Stanley Random Chess, but I'm not at liberty to speak about it.

There are others... but it's a little late so this is a good start.

My feelings on the naming of Chess960 vs. Fischer Random Chess.

It was clear to me that the name choice for Chess960 was political. I didn't, at the time, understand why Fischer was being punished for introducing and promoting this variant and why it shouldn't bear his name... or even the abbreviation FRC.

I now understand that it's much more complicated than I originally understood and that the politics were keeping people from playing the variant. Do i think it's fair to Fischer? Not particularly. His politics and this variant have nothing in common aside from himself. I freely interchange the names and don't feel either "owns" the variant.
As for playtesting new variants, I don't currently have the time. I can advise on what I have seen work and not work. I can critique problems that I might have encountered in creating similar variants, but I don't have time to actually play test.

Having said that, playtesting is the *most* important thing you can do with a game!! This is just as true for Chess Variants as for any other game. I fully support you in attempting to find testers and applaud that you are making the effort!
@liminal (#21)

> Strate-Go Chess - Chess mixed with Stratego. You can see where pieces are but you don't know what pieces are what. King Capture wins.

Technically this is easier than blindfold chess, because you can track your opponent's kind by looking at where that piece moves. After all, it isn't a randomized back rank.

Even if it was a back rank, you have to know what your pieces are, and because it is symmetrical, you can track your opponent's king.
Are you being serious? Props for being inventive, but you created games nobody cares about. It's like me creating a new form of poker that only my friends play. Hardly warrants an "AMA." All you've done is taken other people's ideas and slightly tweaked them.
@InnateAluminum In the brief description I don't go into enough detail. To start the game each player takes turn (or places in secret) their pieces on the board. You can even have pawns on the back rank. So the analogy to Stratego is because people tend to leave pieces in place to hide their value. Since it's King Capture (not Check or Check Mate), you could technically have the King on the first row, in line with a Rook... but neither player would know that until the Rook attempted to take.

@SlickRick07 You might think that, right? But Chess.com and Lichess are both relatively newcomers to the chess variant scene. For example there are thousands of people playing Lao Tzu Chess with tens of thousands of games recorded over a decade. And if you think making a poker variant is easy, much less a chess variant, I certainly invite you to try it. You quickly find out that it's hard work and most of your great ideas are crappy and at the end you have to compromise to find things that are fun. But hey, this is just an AMA for fun, it's not hurting anyone's feelings, and you might find out that chess is a lot bigger than you think.

A very simple to implement variation, with nearly nothing to learn, is "No" chess. After each move, you tell the opponent the move he can't do. Very stressful. Played only 3 or 4 games of it, and never wanted to play it again. Obviously, if your opponent has only one legal move, he has to do it. Before the first move of the game, black tells what initial move white can't do. Typical situation:
You capture a piece and don't let the opponent recapture it.
To play this var, just set an unrated game like 10 + 20 and send a message before each move.
@BearJr While not a question, I'll answer it like you asked me what I think of that variant.

I've only played it once and like you, found it simultaneously frustrating and fascinating. The strategy/tactic you found annoying, capture and forbid recapture is interesting because it's pretty idiosyncratic to this variant. You find yourself having to double protect important pieces and I felt pawn structure was much more important than in regular chess. Did you think that too?
No, I didn't. My first two games, against the same player, ended with checkmate in about 20 moves, one win for each one. Maybe only early game complications, with plenty of pieces on the board, can lead to an interesting mating atacks. I think endgames in this var can be very boring. Against another player, when checkmate became impossible, with the queens off the board, we agreed to a draw. By the way, R+K against K does not lead to checkmate, so, sac your final piece for your last opponent's pawn, and if he has only a rook left it's a draw.
@BearJr Some people play this way as a handicap, where only one player is denied a move. In other version I've seen you play a move and your opponent either accepts or refutes the move and you have to take it back to play another move. All of these version are, of course, different and require different strategies.

Did you play here or over the board?

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