George Duke wrote on Mon, Oct 6, 2008 04:38 PM UTC:
Bastion of Orthodoxy more even than FIDE is the Chess Variant Pages? I think grandmasters would tend to scoff
at Shatranj, in spite of Kramnik's publicly playing similar Makruk. FIDE 8x8 just has tremendous historical leverage, and it is variantists' prerogative to tilt back. Or is Chess Variant Page just to have another generation of
orthodoxists? Come on, hundreds of CVs are better than OrthoChess. It is
matter of selecting and organizing the right ones appropriate for timely evolution. Possibly that is what Duniho and Muller are covertly leading up to, talking about readiness of the several engines. It is the reason I constantly rate and evaluate CVPage material. Hold a CV up to FIDE mad queen and maybe 10% of the time the CV is better altogether, but just does not get proper recognition. Of the 9 nominated here so far, I rate Centennial, Mastodon, Eurasian, and Switching better than standard 8x8.