> The self-play stats show how massively imba all those suggestions are,
Classical, white wins 18/1000 and black wins 3/1000 with 1 minute per move. Semi-torpedo, this is 27 & 6/1000, so it's both less imbalanced and less drawish than classical chess with very high level play.
(White's 6x advantage is reduced to 4.5x).
It also has a slightly richer set of interesting moves per position on average.
A bit more imbalance in other variants isn't a catastrophic problem, either, IMO, with tournaments consisting of multiple games and equal numbers of games as white and black.
Your other point-- yes, any benefits of tinkering with the rules needs to be balanced against what it does to the traditions and continuity of the history of the game.
Classical, white wins 18/1000 and black wins 3/1000 with 1 minute per move. Semi-torpedo, this is 27 & 6/1000, so it's both less imbalanced and less drawish than classical chess with very high level play.
(White's 6x advantage is reduced to 4.5x).
It also has a slightly richer set of interesting moves per position on average.
A bit more imbalance in other variants isn't a catastrophic problem, either, IMO, with tournaments consisting of multiple games and equal numbers of games as white and black.
Your other point-- yes, any benefits of tinkering with the rules needs to be balanced against what it does to the traditions and continuity of the history of the game.