What other variants should be added to chess?

@CoffeeBeanKiller said in #10:

If you really do not think that adding a link to pychess on Lichess homepage would result in more people checking it out, I don't know what to tell you.

It's not about "people checking other sites out". It's about giving random links to other sites.

There are many sites which offer lots of chess variants, pychess is only one of them.

But as I said, most people here are not interested in variants at all. And even if they were, they can easily find sites that offer this.

There is no point in showing a link to a site showing variants. It would be much more useful to show links to:

• FIDE
• Video channels
• Chess shops
• Chessable
• Chess.com
• Other chess-related resources.

And even links to sites that are not chess related at all would be more relevant to most users than pychess.

I want 4PC added to Lichess. It was a lot of fun on Chess.com, and I think it'd fit nicely here.

@nadjarostowa said in #11:

There is no point in showing a link to a site showing variants. It would be much more useful to show links to:
(...)

• Chess.com

Ok I am not discussing with trolls.

@CoffeeBeanKiller said in #13:

Ok I am not discussing with trolls.

I do, obviously.

Should be added, none, I guess, but would I wish for one? Yes. 2x2 crazyhouse because that is a marvelous game for me personally, but variants are a side note to the game we all love and cherish. I like some variants on PyChess. 960-3check could be my ultimate variant, but the real game is plain and ordinary chess.

There's that word, "Should." I have fun playing some variants, but I'd rather play regular chess. I think there are enough variants. I could play all the variants, and I'd still not master a single one. I would be interested to see more variants, but I don't think it's mandatory.

"Freestyle" could be the variant that saves chess. It would be even better if it allowed for blunder-free play.

When you ask a teacher for help to understand an exam question, you usually get some assistance, and that's not cheating. A teacher might even tell you your approach is wrong, without giving you the answer. Similarly, an AI could provide the same feedback in Freestyle chess, pointing out a blunder and give you the option to take back the move at a cost of game score balance.

Every time you accept this correction, your opponent gains a small decimal advantage toward the result and gets a bit more time on their clock. If you use the hint too often, you might win the game, but your opponent could ultimately win the full match point. This way, chess games could become blunder-free while still containing human-driven mistakes and inaccuracies.

The assistance would only affect blunders at a specific, shallow depth of one, two, or three. The complex tactics and strategies would remain human. Essentially, a simple AI automated analysis would be safeguarding against our human blunders, like a guard rail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_Chess_G.O.A.T._Challenge

FIDE is completely inefficient and slow to adapt to new technology and modern competition formats. It's a pipe dream to think they'll bend over backward to cater to the elite with official 960 ratings, let alone embrace variants outside of 960.

Now when it comes to Lichess stance towards variants.

Saying we have "enough" variants is kinda off. A bunch of them are totally boring. No one cares about Racing Kings, and no one's gonna play Horde in real life. I think we should add variants that are actually based on regular chess.

I'm seriously bummed that Lichess, unlike Chesscom, kinda puts down variants. There are people here all the time, compared to pychess. If this website supported more variants that pychess offers, there would be more competition in that variant here.

@Nordlandia said in #18:

There are people here all the time, compared to pychess.

Now, what does this tell you about the popularity of chess variants?

It's the same, no matter which server exactly you look at... it is always the same small handful of people who play variants.

Adding more variants adds significant cost, while adding no value to the vast majority of users. At the same time, players who love to play variants (which is ultimately a different game), are already catered for on specialized sites, and have their community there.

Again regular and variant players gravitate towards this site cause there is people online 24/7.

It would have been appreciated by myself, and presumably others, had Lichess incorporated a feature to engage in curated set of Chess960. The entire compendium of nine hundred and sixty permutations is not strictly necessary; a subset thereof would suffice.

G.K. said in 2004: In fact, of the 960 positions, approximately 95 percent are visually unappealing. The remaining positions, for the most part, align with our concept of “chess geometry.” If such an idea were to be implemented, it would be reasonable.

5-12.5% range is more than enough in that regard. The subset idea of 960 is based on the standard framework of traditional chess and is neither overly complex nor unfamiliar.