Enter Your Reply

It is possible that this was discussed before, but I wanted to get it
discussed now.  I wanted to look at why people are interested in chess
variants.  I can see some reasons, but would like more listed:
1. People feel something with FIDE Chess needs to be tweaked to improve
the game.  This could be the opening book being stale, or too many draws,
or just the play is getting over analyzed and tired.  People who think this
want to add a rules tweak to update things and hope the rules tweak gets
adopted it FIDE Chess with the rules tweak becomes the new chess everyone
plays.  The tweak could be small or large.  This is a desire for 'The Next
Chess'.
2. Something about chess bugs someone, and they feel they need to make
chess match more of the type of game they want to play.  This is similar to
the prior one, but the person's motivation is more personal, and the
interest isn't to have 'The Next Chess', but something they find more
fun on a personal level.
3. The person is a creative person who like to create new things.  They
want to experiment with chess, to come up with something interesting and
new.
4. Person is into novelty.  They want something new to play, and don't
want to face the same challenge.  They want to develop a general mastery
rather than memorize lines of play.  Variants are a way to play something
new.

Anyhow, let me know if I missed any and which of these would fit why you
are interested in chess variants.