Why KoTH variant is so unpopular?

@cFlour said in #7:
> To be honest, all variants are educational. The reason koth doesn't have so many players, as there is no 'community' formed between koth players, compared to other variants where communities are formed.
>
> Here is how all variants are educational:
> Chess960: Think on what to do if you get into an unfamiliar position.
> KotH: Control over centre of the board
> 3+ & Atomic: Protect the king
> Crazyhouse: Protection of weak squares
> Horde: How to destroy your opponent's defence
> Racing Kings: Restricting the opponent's king moves
> Antichess: Having beter position on board
No. For playing atomic intensively in the past, I can testify that it surely doesn't improve your chess skills - rather the opposite.

I agree I play always Racing Kings and i find very difficult a game. To know racing kings is the most unpopular game here but i love it

@SerenaSen936 said in #8:
> Antichess is not important either, right? Why are there so many people play Antichess?

Have you even tried playing it or studying it? At basic level antichess seems useless, but if you properly study it, you realise its more closer to chess than the other variants.

@cFlour said in #13:
> Have you even tried playing it or studying it? At basic level antichess seems useless, but if you properly study it, you realise its more closer to chess than the other variants.
Which is why there is a 800 points disparity between your antichess rating and your blitz rating?

@polylogarithmique said in #14:
> Which is why there is a 800 points disparity between your antichess rating and your blitz rating?

If you truly don't believe him, my standard chess has also benefited from playing variants and in particular antichess.

I have played antichess for almost 3 years now, have my own YouTube channel, and have successfully made the final 4 in the ACWC. I can one hundred percent testify that antichess and other variants benefit your standard chess. For one they have very similar tactics: space control, giving yourself options, finding specific moves, and overall make you a better problem solver and thinker. And I think that is what makes all variants beneficial to a certain extent unless you are some sort of master in standard: it gives you new ways of thinking, improves your problem solving skills, and makes you understand strategy games, and in general life better.

Finally, your argument regarding the disparity in his ratings is inherently flawed. It is much easier to get a higher rating in antichess than it is in standard chess...there are far less people playing. In any case, he has worked hard in it, so his rating has gone up. He has not worked the same way in standard, and yet he is obviously still being rewarded concerning it. I have also talked a lot about rating here, but that is not even the be all and end all of strength. What does 800 points of rating mean when comparing these two things?

The argument was not that playing variants improves your standard rating by hundreds of points. The argument is rather that you can see benefits in your problem solving, thinking, and gameplay action by stimulating your mind to something new, and that is what some of these variants players are trying to explain.

@yourself101010 it is my understanding that your ratings should depend on your strength relative to the pool of players, and not on the size of the pool.

But even assuming that you are right, my initial objection - namely that Atomic doesn't improve your chess skills, and actually harms them - still stand. The major difference is that in Atomic, there is no "takes takes". So there is also no need to count how many pieces attack a square vs how many defend it, and no need to protect your pieces. Also your king is often safer in an empty space rather than surrounded by pawns that might be targeted by your opponent. It's a completely different picture than chess, and switching from one another is not an easy mental exercise. I can't count how many times have I automatically played 1...f6 in standard chess because my opponent opened with 1.Nf3.

@polylogarithmique I never doubted that the games are different. My argument is that you improve your general studying, thinking, and reasoning skills.

Let's think of a real life example. When you go to the gym and you do things like back squats or bench press or curls, what do these things do? They make you stronger. Do we ever use these actions in any part of our lives outside of these actions? No. I can't name one press, curl, or back squat thing you ever do in real life--and yet these are the things that have been proven effectively to make you stronger.

Now let's turn it back to chess variants. Your argument for the fact that you play f6 in responding to Nf3 is not a reflection of your game strength and improvement, but a result of muscle memory. This is not a clear example of how it has made your mind deteriorate in terms of standard chess...just your body automatically processes f6 in response to Nf3. If you were to think about it, you would not play f6 and thus your standard chess strength has not decreased whatsoever.

I once again agree that there are different tactics in different games including defense etc. Again in real life though, this time say problems in a math class. Do you do the same random problems over and over again just so they are going to make you better at doing these problems? No, they rather strengthen your brain, create new neural connections, and so when something in your life relates to what you practiced, you can make the connection. I think strategy games are also transferrable. Saying that these variants make you worse at standard (at least at our level) is improper because they all do essentially the same thing: they create new neural connections in our brains, allow us to think more effectively, thus producing results. The one argument I could see that makes variants poor for your standard chess is in masters, precisely because variants take away from time you could spend studying standard chess. Therefore it is not the actual act of playing variants that makes you worse, but rather the time you do not spend playing standard that halts your improvement.

@yourself101010 yes problem-solving skills is a thing, but the specific strategy, the "spirit" of a game is more important in my opinion. And I think that is what takes most time to acquire, so I don't think you need to be at master level so that the time not spent on chess makes a difference. As they say, it takes 100 000 hours to reach mastery in any activity.

Finally I am not completely convinced by your transferable skills argument. Yes, when you learn a new variant, you need to learn new ways of thinking. However, I am not sure how important that is as compared to re-using skills that you already own. When I was playing Atomic intensively, I would say around 80% of my progress was from learning opening lines (openings can be quite tricky and trappy in Atomic), which is definitely specific to Atomic and not transferrable, and 20% was getting familiar with the specific strategy of that game, and even that probably 19% was just by re-using transferrable skills of problem-solving I already owned.

Actually we were discussing why KoTH is less popular. but this is ofcourse also an interesting topic. I find atomic sharpens my positional skills. You must keep track of what pieces have access to what squares in atomic, more so i think than in standard, because you can outright lose the game by one oversight. So atomic may train certain opening tactics which make no sense in regular chess, but there are things which i think are transferable to standard.