Herlock Sholmes: Not so long ago? Both the en passant and the castling rules date from the late Middle Ages. And the queen has moved as she does now since the late Middle Ages as well. Perhaps the only fundamental change in the rules of the game of chess in the last 500 years were the 50- and 100-move rules. I would call chess a game that's evolving all the time. In fact, I'd call chess a rock solid game when it comes to stability of the rules.

As for people playing the same kind of music - that seems to be more common than the other way around. There are more people who stick to Rock or Classical music or HipHop or Country than there are people that enjoy all of equally.

And you may find chess boring, it's still far more popular than any variant. There are no tournaments with hundreds of thousands of dollars of price money for chess variants. There are no players of chess variants known by the public at large. There's no regular mentioning of chess variants in newspapers.

And I bet that while the set of people who find chess boring is pretty large, I expect the set of people who find chess boring, but chess variants not to be pretty small. Most people who have no interest in chess have no interesting in variants either.

Personally, I find many chess variants interesting to play a few games in. But then the novelty wears off, and I never play the variant again. I keep playing regular chess though.