Herlock Sholmes: Before deciding whether or not to have a go at a particular chess variant, I think a player might ask the age old question : "What is in it for me?" In this case the answer may need to involve some personal satisfaction, stretching of the mind, the probability of being able to play some more games in order to build on lessons learnt, and eventually some practical reward such as a public rating, a medal, or even some money.
For this to happen, there have to be enough people involved, of a sufficiently high chess standard, who all think the variant is of high enough quality to make it worth playing more and more games. This has already happened to some extent on this site with some chess variants, which must be a good thing.
Would it help if some grandmasters got involved? I am not so sure it would.

Playing a game of Dice Chess at the moment has given me an idea for a new variation "Probability Chess" (better than dice chess I think).
Instead of a simple dice dictating which type of piece you can move, piece probabilities are calculated first, based on how many moves with each type of piece are possible.
For example, for white's first move there are 16 possible pawn moves, 4 knight moves but no others. Based on this Pawn is assigned 80% and Knight is assigned 20%. Then a randomiser determines which type of piece must be moved accordingly.
To illustrate this further, let's look at how a game might proceed. If white must move a Pawn and plays 1 e4, and then black must move a pawn and plays 1 .. c5, then white has 30 possibilities for the 2nd move: 15 pawn moves, 5 knight moves, 5 bishop moves, 4 queen moves and 1 king move. Based on this Pawn is assigned 50%, Knight 16.67%, Bishop 16.67%, Queen 13.33% and King 3.33%. White has a good chance now of being able to develop a piece, but if Pawn is chosen again then white should choose a move that takes into account how this will affect the probabilities of being able to move certain pieces next time. Later in the game you will be affecting your opponents piece probabilities too!
This is where a lot of the skill in this game will be, and what makes it more fascinating than Dice Chess.
Who thinks this sounds like a good game for BrainKing to support?

lukulus: Yes, it is very confusing, but you can get used to it in the end.
Over a year ago I downloaded a trial copy of Zillions, which allowed me to play Ultima and claims to use Abbott's original rules. I had to play and lose several games while learning about tactics, but I did feel I was making some progress.
This site does not allow using a machine to help you with your moves, but training against software is surely allowed isn't it?
Does anyone think it is possible to get beyond simple tactics in Ultima and move on to strategy?

The Topalov vs Kramnik world championship match is starting soon, see
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3349

Any predictions? I just hope that Kramnik's health stays intact, so that it will be a fair contest. If both players are on top form I think it could be the highest quality match ever. It is a shame there will be only 12 games though.

WhisperzQ: I think that white will choose the Knight to take the Knight on d5 and then give 'check' with the Bishop. Surprisingly, the King cannot avoid capture now!

BlueJ: The rules say "the target locations of the king and the rook doing the castling move are the same as in standard Chess". So your king will go to c1 and your rook to d1.
See http://brainking.com/en/GameRules?tp=67