Rich Hutnik wrote on Tue, Oct 7, 2008 12:37 AM UTC:
Ok, on to the latest round of comments regarding what was posted:
1. I am NOT the one who unilaterally decides the standards, nor should
anyone else be the one to decide his. My suggestion for dealing with the
the potential for 8 Queens is a PREFERENCE of mine, that I believe is
relevant when you start adding a wider arrange of pieces. One can go
'well it is theoretically possible, but you never see it'. You NEVER
see it? When you are dealing with chess variants, where you can bend the
rules left and right, then the 'never' becomes more likely. This is NOT
a big deal, just an observation I made, particularly when I ended up
looking at Seirawan Chess and saw that the use of reserves can lead to a
game where you could have issues when dealing with reserves and the
possibility of a wide range of pieces getting introduced to a game via
reserves.
2. I do agree the standards can't be enforced, unless it is in an IAGO,
FIDE, etc... setting where you have tournament rules. I will say the lack
of having influence by associations has resulted in checkers having red and
black pieces on a red and black board (board and pieces have the same
colors). The standards are tradition that is followed. No one knows why,
but they do. Standards can end up saving time for everyone and lay a level
of expectation. By encouraging standards, we can accelerate the adoption
process of variants. The also lend to knowing which side of the road to
walk on, for example.
3. Joe may be onto something with 'Tracks'. We likely need to rework
it, but the idea of categories (aka Tracks) for variants, would be
helpful.
4. And this community has had an impact on the world of chess variants.
May I suggest this community get in touch with the British Chess Variants
Society and see if we can begin discussions for recommendations for naming
conventions, and other things like mutators? Get everyone involved with
this, and not just this side of the ocean. Of course, if they refuse,
then that is their issue. I know my discussing things with them broke
down when I had attempted this in relation to IAGO. I am up for whatever
is come up with. I would also have IAGO adopt whatever the findings
were.
5. There is no guarantee the findings would be perfect, or never change,
but I see it as a start. We could end up doing a variation on the
Internet's Request for Comments system, for having recommendations.
Ok, enough for now. I have food and some TV to get to here in a bit.
