Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

As I commented before, I like the idea of a variant that has many different possible permutations.

It is the lack of rules not their addition that increases the variety of
opening positions. A quick look at sit-tu-yin would suffice. Other than
pawns, the other pieces has no fixed starting points and can be placed
anywhere. I generally like chess variants that has free placements at the
start. Anything that obliterate openings while at the same time decrease
number of rules is alright by me.

This page seems to address something different entirely, that of number of
variants given a set of mutators, a term explicated and promoted by João
Pedro Neto. Each of the 'rules' is actually a mutator. It is no surprise
the number of variants one can create by stacking mutators together.

What is missing here is an over-riding theme. By theme I mean a organizing
principal, not the story that the variant tell. Without a theme to guide
the relationship of the mutators, we just have the mutators themselves,
which though interesting seem haphazardly grouped together.

This system makes possible game of: 10x10 Charging Rook, Reflecting
Bishop,
Ultima Pawn, Restricted Queen, Double Move, Knight Immobilizer, Falcon
Promoter, Strict Triangulation, Bishop Warp Point, Cylindrical Knight,
Switching, Double Black Hole, Alfil Jack, Bishop and Knight Altair
Jumping, Falcon, Bishop and Knight Dropping Falcon Chess

'1a2a3e4a5b6a7a8a9a10a11a12a12a13a14a15a16a17a18a19a20a' represents in our system on size 8x10, out of *91.5 Trillion* possible chess variates of Falcon, the one Gary Gifford is calling this week under his Preset 'Latrunculi duo milia et septum' on 8x8. On 8x8 it works without any extra Falcon piece, but the same enhanced Bishop and Rook. I.e., we use here the Crowned Rook (R+Ferz) and Crowned Bishop(Bishop+Wazir) with Falcon, so there is that difference. Yet Gifford says self-righteously in Comment below respecting some conceit of 'quantity and quality' that 'I am not impressed about out ability to greatly increase the number just for the sake of doing so'. We imagine then that Gifford has some technique to single out R-Ferz and B-Wazir on 8x8 as particularly of high quality, suitably screened for display separately. Instead, we represent that one single CV along with the other 91,499,999,999,999 without discrimination. On 8x8 board, what about the other trillion that can easily be derived the same way as here in '91.5 Trillion'? Just prefix [88] to represent that size, eliminate Rule Number 6 about Falcon alternatives, and somewhere on the order of 1 to 10 Trillion easily remain systematically described unambiguously with little effort. Well, clearly 100, or even as many as 500, of them are already enunciated by others within CVPage, DPritchard's ECV or elsewhere, so how easy to add one, two, three (uncreatively or self-servingly) from such still-very-extensive available sample.

It's true that it's easy to offer a write-up of a game or games that can easily be permuted to produce 'zillions' of games. My 4th post, Two Large Shatranj Variants, is the biggest lie I've ever told. There are 2 board sizes, an 8x10 and a 10x10, and I offer a range of possibilities that extends into the zillions, with alternate pieces for each type of piece, alternate placements of pieces in the standard setups, a number of different promotion rules, and, with Atlantean Barroom, a new approach to 10x10 board setups that produced a new setup for Paulovit's 10x10 game. From that I've drawn 3 games, Great, Grand, and Barroom Shatranj. I think most of the other games would be poor, with an inappropriate mix of pieces. I consider 'Too Large' a game system, not a game, with a total of 3 current games [+ 2 variants using rooks] as its representatives. Only 3. Not zillions.

As far as Gary's game, with the RF and the BW, well, even though I am not a fan of the approach of making FIDE more powerful by adding shortrange moves to infinite sliders, it is obvious that I am in a very small minority. The chess world obviously prefers augmenting the current power pieces somewhat to actually replacing any of the current pieces. That being the case, there are only 3 good solutions currently that I've seen: Gary's, adding the 'sidestep' to the B&R; yours, adding the moa and mao to the B&R; and Carrera's, adding the N to the B&R. Only 3. [And not excellent, but that's me.]

[EDIT] When I posted this, I saw George had made another comment. Okay, I'd like more of a write-up from Gary, too, but it's been my experience that people don't like all that written stuff getting in the way of the game. I got complaints about my verbosity, and suggestions were made that any little stories I might want to add could be put in the back where they're very easily ignored. After Too Large and Atlantean Barroom, what do you think I'd wanted to write for Lemurian Shatranj? Look at the page: it's a bare-bones minimal piece and rules description with no background or flavor aside from the name, which is effectively meaningless without the background.

Hi, George. While I'm not up on my math, I think the numbers of chess variants are limited. Instead of building up from the bottom, taking games like Falcon Chess and showing how each variant can be modified in all sorts of ways, giving zillions of games, let's look at it the other way, from the outside rather than the inside, so to speak. What are the hard limits of chess? There are 3 components to a game, the board, the pieces, and the rules. 
Board size: it can't get much smaller than 1 or 2 squares, nor can a game of chess go much larger than a 100x100 2D board. Even the 'infinite board' variants really don't need more than maybe 1000x1000, and realistically, can be pretty much played out on 100x100 without too much trouble. Let's take 100x100 as our top size, then, for a board; 10,000 squares should be enough room for most games of chess. And we can deal with the rest later, should that be necessary.
Numbers of pieces: If you assume 50% board coverage, then 5000 pieces is about the maximum number you'd want on the board. That seems a bit much for me. Without some tricky movement rules, I've found that 100 pieces per side is a bit much. And without some tricky piece design, 25 different pieces per side is also a bit much. Even if you go with 1000 pieces per side, and 100 different pieces [a team chess game if I ever saw one], that's still a  number we're familiar with. And running all the permutations through just gives you a very big number. And only potential, not actual, games.
Rules: here's where we get crazy. This is where we think all the infinities come in. And we all too often design game systems instead of games, adding to the mess. And what else we often do is mistake the potentialities of the system for the actualities of games. The map is not the territory. Further, while we're into the gadjillions of potential games through permutations, all these games still, in principle, are countable - we're doing it ourselves as we go along. So let's say that the total number of permutations to any starting game is [on the order of] one bazillion, with the specific value of bazillion to be determined [by actual count] in the future. 
Number of chess variants: Currently, there's about 1000 - 10,000 CVs, giving somewhere between 1 and 10,000 bazillion known total potential CVs. Since they're made by people, one way to look at it is that unless there are people and chess forever, the number of variants cannot be infinite. Current theories of the universe favor the less than infinite position.
How many ways can a piece move? On a board of 1 - 10,000 squares, how many different ways can a piece move? ... ... ... Now, dump the really stupid ways. Does that add up to infinite? [Even putting the really stupid ways back in doesn't; heck, people with computers'll play and do darn near anything. And, judging by the spam I get, they think I will, too!] 
How many different boards are there? Well, this has gotta be a very big number, but it has to contain between 1 and 10,000 or so squares that have to be connected in some sorts of ways for the pieces to interact. If you dump the turkeys, it becomes a somewhat manageable number, at least conceptually.
Each new game is going to add either a new bazillion to the total number of CVs, or is going to increase the size of a bazillion for all the other games [at least; truly innovative games may do both, more than once]; in either case, it's countable. 
Chess occupies a limited area in 'game space', that conceptual area where all games are found and [somehow] categorized. And it is a game of discrete parts, digital in nature rather than analog. Pieces and board positions come in units: in chess, the number of squares on the board is set in the rules [even if the rules allow changes, these are determined by the rules] and the number of pieces on the board is there for all to see [and count]. Changes in this number of pieces are again determined by the rules and the actions of the players as allowed by the rules. But all changes are in discrete units, going up or down some whole number, of the limited number of pieces or squares we can have in a game that can be called 'chess'.
Given that humans play these games, either on boards or on computers, I think a case has been made for a very large but countable number of realizeable games. And even playable games. And given the limitations of humans [and you can interpret that broadly to include until-now hypothetical intelligences if you wish], I think it's more reasonable to assume there is a limit to the number of decent chess variants, and, by extension, all chess variants. And while the former number may well be a question of taste, the latter number is easily seen even without calculation to be a number far huger than the total number of chess games ever played or, most likely, to be played. 
So, the number of variants is effectively, if far from actually, infinite, but most of the best pickings are near the top. While many weird and complex games may gain great stature in the future, I think that the percentage of 'hits' will be higher in the smaller and simpler games, and spread out in the larger number of more complex games in a pattern much like that of prime numbers. 
Enjoy,
Joe