Going back the question I posed at the start and changing it up a bit, let's ask: "Is it really necessary to make players sit through these 16 moves just for the same position to be reached every time?"
If you answered no, then you'd be correct. Although this variant is not necessarily a forced draw and has some decent gameplay, the opening is basically redundant, which is why it was autodeclined.
I would argue that in a scenario like this, the tester should just make the starting position the position after the forced opening and test from there. If it is acceptable after the change, then the variant gets a PR.
Yeah for sure if we still think the variant can be interesting we sometimes won’t immediately send it back because then we’d get a new submission anyway
Reason #2: Forced Opening
Going back the question I posed at the start and changing it up a bit, let's ask: "Is it really necessary to make players sit through these 16 moves just for the same position to be reached every time?"
If you answered no, then you'd be correct. Although this variant is not necessarily a forced draw and has some decent gameplay, the opening is basically redundant, which is why it was autodeclined.
I would argue that in a scenario like this, the tester should just make the starting position the position after the forced opening and test from there. If it is acceptable after the change, then the variant gets a PR.