This reminds me a little of the combinatorial game theory game done on Go endgames: fascinating but impractical! There are basically three major chesses; weste

This reminds me a little of the combinatorial game theory game done on Go endgames: fascinating but impractical! There are basically three major chesses; western, Xiangqi and Shogi, and three popularish Western variants (Chess960, suicide and bughouse). All of them are decent games. (fwiw, ~2000 ELO at chess, ~3 kyu at Go. competent but unspectacular.)