Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Oct 24, 2016 03:48 AM UTC:
Actually, from what I've seen, there is a lot of truth to it, but less so now than previously, I think. The standard attitude among chess teachers was that variants are bad because they take valuable training time away from learning FIDE. Now bughouse is fairly popular at chess clubs. I saw it being played a decade or so ago myself. And I've heard (read) that other FIDE-like games are being played a little. Plus the internet has opened up the world of variants to the world, if anyone bothers to look for it. So I do think we will see more variants being played. And I also think, for what that's worth, playing variants does improve your FIDE game - at least, most variants, because you need "chess thinking" to play them. There are variants which take you so far from standard chess you are no longer using chess thought, or just chess thought, to play the games.
Actually, from what I've seen, there is a lot of truth to it, but less so now than previously, I think. The standard attitude among chess teachers was that variants are bad because they take valuable training time away from learning FIDE. Now bughouse is fairly popular at chess clubs. I saw it being played a decade or so ago myself. And I've heard (read) that other FIDE-like games are being played a little. Plus the internet has opened up the world of variants to the world, if anyone bothers to look for it. So I do think we will see more variants being played. And I also think, for what that's worth, playing variants does improve your FIDE game - at least, most variants, because you need "chess thinking" to play them. There are variants which take you so far from standard chess you are no longer using chess thought, or just chess thought, to play the games.