I wouldn't call standard rules with a slightly reduced set of pieces a variant really. Especially if you start from an easily possible/plausible position, its just training for certain types of position so an entirely logical method to improve play in those circumstances.

Now if you take it further then yes you get a variant. 

Actually there's a rather notable historical one with white having 8 extra pawns but no Q. Due to Legal as per the Enclyopedia of chess variants. Apparently rather balanced and played a fair bit back in the day. (Labourdonnais, Deschapelles etc). Where the extra pawns (free choice 3rd/4th ranks) start seems to matter quite a bit.
 
There's a fun extremist version from Bezta with black having 7 knights and 16 pawns vs a normal army. Extra pawns seemingly fixed at b5-g5,c6,f6 here - their placement will make again make quite a difference. 

I've not played that specifically but do know its wonderfully fun coordinating pawn/knight masses like that. Thats from playing something similar with fairy pieces, fairly free selection of armies etc.

Its certainly fun to see how say more Shogi pawns do vs fewer western ones.  Or how various knight/camel (3,1 leaper) things do in practice. Once ~Queen alternative I did like was bishop + knight + camel all in one piece. Terrifying mobility of course, but somehow limited too. Or knight/(non royal) king crosses. Or a bunch of shogi step movers or....

But good for my chess? Nah. Just fun
(Computer print outs onto flat pieces cf Western shogi pieces kept it entirely playable.).

Although I guess a sense of perspective cf other entirely worthwhile games existing might be somehow useful.  Shogi/Chinese chess/Go etc great for that too of course. Or even Bridge

Hello everybody,

having made a stroll through long forgotten times / threads, I found this one. Soltis (in "Studying Chess Made Easy") recommends some chess variations, most of them without kings (p. 43 ff.), where I could imagine they could be helpful in getting a better feeling for e.g. piece coordination or the characteristics of certain pieces: Rook vs. 5 or 6 pawns, queen vs. 8 pawns; somewhere else (I don't remember where) I found a similar concept: One side having maybe rook, bishop and pawn, the other the queen, or other similar material combinations.
(These games resemble a little bit exercises of mating king with bishop and knight, but as that has some practical relevance (such positions could show up in a real game), I would put that under endgame training.)

My question is: Does anybody of you have used this sort of exercises for training (or just fun) and has felt an improvement in generell chess playing strenght?

Best regards,

Zwischenzugzwang

chesswise wrote on 06/29/11 at 21:06:21:


I don't really get variants.  Don't understand why people play them.  I mean, I understand some folk really enjoy them, but I just don't understand why.  As Bill Hicks might have said - I missed that meeting when we agreed why Bughouse was fun.

Benefits for proper chess though? Maybe.  After all, many years ago taking up squash led to a big improvement in my chess rating.



ps: for anybody who's interested in watching Lev Aronian play Bughouse ...

http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/2007/07/i-beat-aronian-says-andrew-sto...

A friend of mine swore by it. He went from Class D to Class A by doing nothing but playing online blitz games of chess variants. Not that that was even his goal, mind you--he was much less interested in playing "real" chess and any improvement in it was purely coincidental to him. 

My opinion is that wherever you may get your tactics and calculation training, it helps. 


Uhohspaghettio wrote on 06/30/11 at 00:05:17:


For one case, GM Larry Kaufman is also an amateur 5-dan Shogi player and considered one of the strongest Western Shogi players. Edit: Also, I can think of two FMs that are some of the strongest bughouse players in the world.

I think it's an interesting idea at any rate. 

Sometimes I find my brain gets tired of calculating variations before I actually get sick of playing chess myself, but I continue on and usually get worse until I finally quit. Maybe playing a different variant would stimulate it a bit... though I would play Xiangqi for difference because... I guess I want to look at different pieces and them to move in a different way with a bit of a different strategy. For some reason I never play that anymore either though, partly I suppose because I can't find a good server like there is for chess.     
  
The thing is though, you never hear of players who were masters at both chess and a substantially different chess variant or a different board game. In a way, maybe the difference between for example the French Defence and Sicilian is enough of a difference for variety...

It is remotely possible that playing a chess variant may help a player who is struggling to be creative. 

For instance, I have seen a few avid bughouse players learn to sacrifice more actively in real chess games.  (Yes, I called the Royal game "real", thus consigning all others to pretender status.)

Beyond that, there is precious little to commend any variant over the Royal game. Far too many students play chess variants instead of the real thing, to their own detriment.

There will be some who argue that bullet chess and correspondence chess are variants. However, that is twisting the meaning of the word. The rules are basically the same regardless of the time control.