Herlock Sholmes: Your comments and suggestions are curious. Much of this ground has been covered before (that is, attempting to lure more chess players to get interested in variants), and the results (most sadly) have been mediocre at best, dismal at worst.

Chess variants is a fascinating field. I've been delving into it for some 25 years. Still, I don't think chess is boring, but it is definitely overmechanized. One could easily spend an entire lifetime just studying to keep up with the ever-increasing volume of "opening theory". Well, that is rather mundane, and I don't know who would want to do that, except GMs and IMs. Anyhow, chess remains widely popular, but (as you hint) also has become somewhat rigid, and this very condition is what has inspired chess variants!

There are two main problems with chess variants:
1. Many are half-baked ideas that are introduced with little or no play testing, and really not worthy of much consideration, and this tends to drown out the small percentage of really good concepts;
2.Many of those who play only chess (where the potential field of new variants players would naturally derive) ignorantly dismiss the entire collection of variants as "fairy chess" or some other derogatory term. Call it "human nature" if you will, but I find this lack of open-mindedness pointedly unintelligent, which is ironic considering that most chess players think of themselves as "smart". Some have been actually known to express verbatim that just trying a variant would be "beneath their dignity"!!?

Another factor to consider is that CV is relatively young. Chess has been around for many centuries, whereas CV is but a few decades old. There are a few CV dating back farther, but I mainly refer to the explosion of new CV ideas, which is much more recent. How popular was chess after such a short time?

And, for general information, there are descriptions and details of hundreds of variants at the Chess Variant Pages: http://www.chessvariants.com/

Fencer: "Knight Relay Chess" should be included in the list of games at the top of this page.

Although White may have a slight opening edge, I do not believe that this game requires restructuring. The early turns may be, in most games, narrowly sharpened, but there is still plenty of territory to explore.

I also don't favor the so-called "pie rule", or any kind of swap mechanism. Why should a position be too good for the player who moves first, but fine for the opponent who steals the position from him? The net effect is that the first player is compelled to make a deliberately poor move, which is contrary to the whole purpose of playing a game.

Examining ideas is healthy, in fact it is what CVs are made from, but when two separate variant ideas are combined, the result is usually not the interesting product that might have been expected.

Interesting, and that would seem a natural outgrowth of this variant concept, as opposed to trying to keep track of which piece used to be a pawn, etc., if not captured right away.

OK, thanks for the input!

This is NOT covered in the rules!?:

I have a pawn on my seventh rank. If I capture a piece with that pawn, and promote it, then my opponent immediately takes it, does he get a pawn in hand or does he get the piece I promoted to?