Rich Hutnik wrote on Sun, Aug 23, 2009 07:17 PM UTC:
The 'Mad Queen' mutation of what is 'Chess' works, but ends up adding
extra complexity to the game, which makes it harder to learn, and is a
deterent to new players. A lot of these complexities come from what was
done with the pawns. Because of the Mad Queen, Mad Bishop and the pawns,
we now have these additional rules that were added:
* Castling
* En Passante
* Stalemate (Came in the same time) as a draw.
These rules make things more complicated for novices, and hinder the
adopting of chess. Take the example of Near Chess (as a reference, not
made as a self-plug here) and you can keep the mad pieces, but they don't
pick up the other complicated rules. 'Mad Queen' (Modern) chess feels
like a bunch of 'kludge' fixes to a game that went how it did, and is
needlessly complicated.
I am not sure how just saying, 'Let's add one rule tweak or two that I
PERSONALLY like' is going to end up addressing this also. By the way, reducing the time to play (Speed/Fast/Blitz) apparently is how the chess is leaning towards addressing its issues. That and some Chess960 also.