Single Comment

Humorously, newcomer Gilman had the chutzpah to rate Betza's Chessopoly 'Poor' in 2003: '''The setup in my diagram is not a mistake' is a matter of opinion'' opines Charles. Explaining asymmetry, Betza defends he was ''rushing to finish chessopoly so I could write up Race Chess, a great game. Who can remember so far back?'' Thus already in the particular year 2003, year 1997 of inventing both Race and Chessopoly was characterized as long ago by Betza. Betza's most prolific time had of course been the 1970's (not very much 1980's), and at 1994 publication of David Pritchard's 'Encyclopedia of Chess Variants', ''Betzas'' are second only to ''Boyers.'' (chess-design-artist Boyer mostly worked during 1940's and 1950's.) After all also, ancient year 1997 recalled by Betza in the very last Comment here, is well back towards that entire quiet decade for CVs pre-Internet of the 1980's, and just after FischerRandom was announced at Buenos Aires in 1996. Some might argue it would have been well worth pondering FRC for all of the last ten years and not to have designed any purportedly-new CV at all in interim until fully resolving that one's implications. Such was not to be. The quiet period from 1980-1994 itself saw less production numerically than all the prior decades after World War II, yet having among them Schmittberger's Airplane Chess(1981), Gygax's DragonChess(1985) and Duke's Falcon(1992). Then in 1994 Sam Trenholme among others had begun to bring CVs from all eras to wider audiences in new medium Internet. The halcyon pre-Internet days now forever gone, when you would prepare thoroughly to publish new invention in modest chess periodical and eventually present it publicly at club or college with some confidence in field-testing, progressively passing muster.