Although the rules used here are a copy/paste of the version originally posted by the inventor Robert Huber on the chessvariants.com website, I think that Recycle Chess should be played with normal promotion, for the two following reasons :

- Robert Huber has changed his mind inbetween, and all games I have played with him, plus all (numerous) games he played in the circle of german bughouse players were played with normal promotions. Me and him have even designed a (flawed) endgame study which was based on promotion. The only goal of the original rule was to use a single box of pieces, which is of course irrelevant when playing online.

- When the game is played without promotion, it becomes very hard to win endgames, because the pawns become quite useless. For instance, the defender king can head for the 7th and 8th ranks where no pawn drop can molest him any more. This is likely to become a real problem when the general skill level will increase, because in this game it is much harder to win by a direct mating attack than in Loop Chess, both because traded pieces disappear forever and because the king can escape by taking his own pieces.

When I asked Fencer if he could reestablish the promotion rule, he told me that he did not want to make the change for the moment and that the matter should be discussed here first, because :

- He doesn't like to make rules change after the game was published.

- He played some live Recycle Chess with Bobes, who said that promotions were problematic, because they allowed a player to multiply queens too quickly by playing the queen on the eight rank, dropping a pawn on the seventh, capturing the queen with the pawn, dropping another pawn on the seventh, and so on. While this observation certainly makes sense, I don't think that it overweighs the draw danger. And if a player has enough time to set up such a repetitive manoeuvre, he can probably win in other ways too.

So, Recycle Chess players, what do you think about it ?