🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 25, 2011 06:37 PM EST:
George Duke wrote
Provisionally, I think Betza stayed on 64 squares, avoided
80 or 81 or 100, and 90, because to his satisfaction he had found the next
chess, or he decided to act that way consistently for the rest of us
The former idea has some plausibility, given his opinion, as expressed in the comment you linked to, that CWDA may be the next Chess. But I think it would have more plausibility if he didn't create so many other variants. The explanation I find most plausible is, following Occam's razor, that he made variants mainly for the equipment he had available for playing them, which was a regular Chess set. Back when Betza made most of his variants, there weren't yet any computer programs (such as Zillions-of-Games) or websites (such as Game Courier) that would easily let you play almost any CV you could think of. In his day, CVs were played mainly by mail. In this interview, Betza mentions that he was in NOST, which was an organization devoted to postal play of CVs. When someone got moves by mail, it probably helped to be able to set up the current position of the game on a Chess board. Since most people who played by mail were likely to have Chess sets and less likely to have other CV equipment, this would limit most postal play to 8x8 boards. As to why he didn't create Xiangqi or Shogi variants, part of the explanation is given in the same interview I linked to. He didn't have much chance to play Shogi.
George Duke wrote
The former idea has some plausibility, given his opinion, as expressed in the comment you linked to, that CWDA may be the next Chess. But I think it would have more plausibility if he didn't create so many other variants. The explanation I find most plausible is, following Occam's razor, that he made variants mainly for the equipment he had available for playing them, which was a regular Chess set. Back when Betza made most of his variants, there weren't yet any computer programs (such as Zillions-of-Games) or websites (such as Game Courier) that would easily let you play almost any CV you could think of. In his day, CVs were played mainly by mail. In this interview, Betza mentions that he was in NOST, which was an organization devoted to postal play of CVs. When someone got moves by mail, it probably helped to be able to set up the current position of the game on a Chess board. Since most people who played by mail were likely to have Chess sets and less likely to have other CV equipment, this would limit most postal play to 8x8 boards. As to why he didn't create Xiangqi or Shogi variants, part of the explanation is given in the same interview I linked to. He didn't have much chance to play Shogi.