Are Variants Bad for Your Standard Chess?

if the idea is to enjoy the game and not to achieve chess mileposts, then variants can add a lot of happiness.  I have enjoyed 4 way chess for a while until I started to get slightly good, but I got too busy with life and had to stop.  The 4 way dynamics exceed any other gaming experience since I have never tried to do role playing games or teamwork games that much (so i have to learn while i'm supposed to be working. i'm bad at it!) so that is great for life.  I'm not sure if you've asked the right question!

For Automate the skills are pretty much separate from chess.  (It's a new Beta game.)  The only thing you might learn from it could be, IF the computer engine involved is at the right strength for your game, then you could figure out more things about the relative values of the pieces.  It has Bishops 4, Knights 3, Queens 7, Rooks 5.  The common result so far seems to be the Queen and Knights are undervalued. Most players seem to get lots of those (2 queens. Haven't tried 3 yet) and no rooks or bishops. I did lose a game once where my opponent had a rook.  But the engine seems to drop pieces and pawns a lot for no apparent reason, so I'd say Automate is definitely useless so far.

Bughouse for example, distorts normal pattern recognition, and weakens some very important concepts such as how moving pawns create a weakness, since you can just drop a replacement pawn. Basically, contact checks are the only moves that matter, and one major problem is not being able to control the other board, so you have to gamble hoping your partner sees certain moves or risk losing time with chat. It also is extremely reliant on tactics vs positional chess, which is not how real chess works. And also, endgame theory is meaningless, which literally destroys 99% of the thrill of chess.

My lengthy post here does go off on somewhat of a tangent, though I think it's close enough to the original topic for me to post it.

I would like to say, the typical response I get when people deal with my invented variants is -

"That sounds like a really complicated variant. The game of chess is already hard enough. Chess has always been a simple game that brings complexity."

(I don't agree with the last statement, but more pertinently, I've dealt with this trite insult for many years now; while working really hard to develop, analyze and testrun my variant chess games so that people can enjoy them.)

It's almost as if my "overly complicated" games are nothing more to them (critics) than some randomly compiled "complicated" game invented on a fickle, which would somehow muddy the standard game of chess as they've (critics) known it. Instead of treating my games as a separate kind of game of its own to just enjoy in its own right, these invented games of mine seem supposedly to be some kind of threat to the chess skills that said-critics have honed over the years;

which, to me, is complete, utter rubbish and nonsense. 

Already, consider my very first variant, Magician's Deathmatch. which is my simplest one(!!) -

- During a turn, a player may switch a Bishop out for a Magician; once switched in, the Magician can't be switched back out for a Bishop again for the rest of the game. (Multiple Magicians by a player are allowed to be on the board at the same time.)

- Like the pawn, Magician captures differently from movement: she moves sliding as far as 2 diagonal squares but captures by leaping as far as 2 squares orthogonally or diagonally. (Moving: 2 Bishop slide, Capturing: 2 Queen leap)

- If a player's pawn successfully achieves the 6th rank while a Magician by the same player is on the board that turn, that Magican is immediately promoted to High Priest at end-turn. (Only 1 Magician may promote per pawn's 6th-rank achievement.) 

- The High Priestess, in keeping with tradition of separate moving and capturing powers, moves by sliding 2 squares diagonally/orthogonally but captures by leaping 2 squares diagonally/orthogonally/Knight-wards (giving her a 5x5 "area attack")

Look at that! I very easily summarized my game in just 4 bullet points; even adding all those clarification notes in, I was still able to instruct my game in less than 1 1/2 minutes; which I couldn't do  with 'regular' chess (what's with having to explain what checkmate means, how to remove check, how each piece moves, how the weak but complex pawn moves, the complications that come with pawn's first moves and then promotion, all the  required conditions to make castling possible, how the complicated en pessant special maneuver works....... I already got a brain-spin headache just typing all of that in this parenthetical mention!)

But, (as implied) what did many folks say when they came across Magician's Deathmatch? That it's "too complicated".

I suppose that, if enough people say it, the sentiment that my variants might complicate the "simplicity of chess" (which Chess isn't) would hold some validity. On the other hand, I think, at the end of the day, that it's people's lazy attitude which plays a role in variants "messing the game of chess up" for them. Chess variants are what folks make of it. If they regard variants as a detractor, variants will do just that for them!

As far as I'm concerned, I've taught a few of my variants to willing players who regularly play my game as well as the 'regular' game, and they hardly complained horse-dung about it! Not once have they thought that my games were "bad for standard chess".

Ok, today I learned that if the original topic creator deletes their post, the next person in the post history becomes the owner/original creator of the post. :thinking:

*sighs*

Don't be too bothered by my long-winded post 'harshly' discouraging people from thinking of variants as a chess-muddying tool. My sentiment is only one person's. At least two others agree with you.

Also, I agree with your first statement: depends on the kind of variant you're talking about.

Besides, you wouldn't want to commit that kind of forum dishonesty, now, would you?

The variants do not harm, but do not help either.
If player A splits his time between regular and variants and an equally gifted player B focusses on regular exclusively during that same time, then player B will become better than player A.

but player a might have more fun

and if the talent is that of someone who wont really get a living off of chess... isnt that what really matters?

your point does apply though

I play a lot of 10x8 variants here and other sites as well. The 8x8 f-file is the h-file in 10x8. I find I say things like Rah1 when I mean Raf1 in 8x8 chess. I’ll also say Nf3 when I mean Nh3 on the 10x8 board. Also, perfectly playable 8x8 openings, even drawish ones like The London, can get smashed when played equivalently on the 10x8 board. Extreme example:

They are goog for tactics

Its like saying "is thinking about endgames bad for your openings? "