Sam has closed his piano and gone to bed ... now we can talk about the real stuff of life ... love, liberty and games such as Janus, Capablanca Random, Embassy Chess & the odd mention of other 10x8 variants is welcome too
For posting: - invitations to games (you can also use the New Game menu or for particular games: Janus; Capablanca Random; or Embassy) - information about upcoming tournaments - disussion of games (please limit this to completed games or discussion on how a game has arrived at a certain position ... speculation on who has an advantage or the benefits of potential moves is not permitted while that particular game is in progress) - links to interesting related sites (non-promotional)
If anyone is interested in the relative merits of an enormous number of chess variants, check out:
www.chessvariants.com
(sorry, not exactly sure how to include a link in the text). Literally thousands and thousands of variants, divided nicely up into categories such as large board variants (gothic, janus, grand, and Mr. Trice's favorite, omega, among them), small board, etc, including "officially recognized variants" (gothic is among them! Yeehaw!) and variants that do not use what we could consider the standard board and pieces (i.e. many of the Asian games). The site also includes links to any official webpages of federations official and unoffical, and an occasional game engine against which you can try the variant out. Good for hours of mind-numbing rules permutations.