Seirawan Chess

A-ha! Shows what I know. Thanks for the link #20.

I had a chat in the IRC about the process for adding new variants, and the general consensus seems to be (from @thibault included) that "more variants split the userbase. A variant with few users makes for rare pairings. Rare pairings make players unhappy." And, that's fair enough. It makes sense to me on a site like lichess that variants shouldn't really be added without a really good reason.

I disagree. With that logic, they shouldn't have included Atomic or Horde or any of those other variants. People aren't going to be jumping on to play a quick game of S-chess until it gets popular. As long as there's a solid set of people that want to play standard chess, there's no harm in adding variants. I'm sure they have numbers to show that wait times for pairings don't go up every time a variant is added. Stay innovative! Be first! Where else can you play S-Chess anyway?

I agree with the fact that even if adding variants stretches the base a bit, S-Chess would be worthwhile, and popular!
(I'm still arguing with myself on which name to use.)
Here's a video on S-Chess by the man himself, on the stream I watched!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_IS_y8Zrxo
e: The video was made private, it should be back soon.
e2: The video is back.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSXZbbeR-kU Here is the video, now.

This variant is likely to get very popular, since it's actually really exciting. You can see that when Yasser explains it. People who love battles with a lot of power on the board will certainly enjoy it. It just hasn't been popularized well enough to make people interested. Lichess could increase its popularity by implementing it and maybe it will get a second life. I know we can't have countless chess variants on the site, because many will end up deserted, but if there's one variant that's actually worth implementing, it has to be this one, it's one of the best. I'd rather have that on lichess than for example Horde. Instead of adding yet another completely weird chess variant, go for Seirawan chess, please!

Couldn't have phrased it better #26

@ianremsen DUring that discussion on irc, have any of lichess developers contributed to actually how hard would be to program it? Or would they have other obstacles (designing pieces for example etc.)?

I missed that IRC discussion; however, offhand I can think of some challenges (aside from load testing which affects each of the following):
1. Designing pieces for all the 2D and 3D sets
2. Indicating moved back-rank pieces to new spectators
3. FEN encoding and move encoding/decoding
4. Move entry and validation esp. since the rules are complex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seirawan_chess#Rules

#29 Aren't 4. and 2. valid for all variants, 2. in the sense that the variant has to be explained? I would honestly say 1. is the biggest issue of the four!