Two "Problemist" Variants - seeking opponents

My main worry is that these games may only appeal to serious problemists, as they deal with things that are usually only discussed in the context of chess problems (i.e. puzzles), as opposed to games/variants. It's also difficult to play either of them in any form other than correspondence (especially "Retroduels"; I doubt it could be played OTB without adjournments).

But in any case, here are the rules for "War of Mates":

• Starting position (as well as pieces, basic rules, etc.) is the same as in standard chess.
• On each turn, a player makes a normal move, but must then continue with a sequence of [alternating] moves which ends in mate for that player's side. The shorter this sequence is, the better.
• Only the initial move of a turn alters the true board position. The rest are only used to determine the player's score for a given turn, which is the number of full moves required for mate (not including the player's initial move). So if you make a move as White, and then need 4 alternating moves per side (i.e. 4 for Black, 4 for White) to mate Black's king, your score for that turn is 4.
• The standard chess winning condition remains the same. There are, however, two losing conditions as well. Namely: (1) Failure to produce a mating sequence on any given turn, and (2) reaching a score of 500 points or more (remember that a higher score is a worse one).
• The only other change to the standard chess rules concerns 3-fold repetition and the 50-move rule - neither of these scenarios result in a draw in "War of Mates". Instead, they can simply be ignored, with the game continuing as it would in any other situation.

And now, for "Retroduels":

• Starting position (as well as pieces, basic rules, etc.) is the same as in standard chess.
• After every initial move [by either side], both players must construct a sequence of legal moves [beginning from the starting position] which ends with the current position on the board (such a construction is referred to as a "proof game").
• White's proof games must end with White to move, while Black's proof games must end with Black to move. The side producing the shorter proof game gets to move next.
• The above procedure occurs only after the initial move of a turn. If one player has just moved twice in a row, play automatically passes to his/her opponent.
• Regarding 3-fold repetition and the 50-move rule: a two-move turn by one player counts as half a move [and not one full move], while the "intermediary" position from such a turn does not count as having been previously reached.

I'm hoping there are at least a few people out there who are willing to play chess variants like these. They are a lot more fun, and a lot less complicated, than they appear to be.  :)

Obviously you choose your opponent's moves, right? So you can purposely kill off his pieces or do whatever is necessary to put him in check?

So one side makes good moves and the other bad? (but it's not part of actual moves)

Does the actual play usually look the same as a normal game? It sounds like between each  move there is a lot of calculation to make a smaller "fast losing game" and this count may or may not have an impact on the prime game.

Maybe after this Holiday season (early January) I'll try. How often does the game play out so the count gets near 500?

Yes - though I think it's slightly more accurate to call this "cooperative play", since it is essentially one player making moves for both White and Black. If it wouldn't have made the 1st post even longer than it already was, I'd have mentioned that such a sequence is often referred to as a "helpmate", which is a well known form of composition in the world of chess problems/puzzles.

Yes - on the surface, at least. It was only due to length-related considerations that I did not point this out in my own description of the game's rules, so I'm glad you noticed.

I wouldn't really call it "a lot of calculation". You might be surprised how easily helpmates can often be engineered within just a small handful of moves. For instance, White (on his/her 1st turn) can open with 1.e4 and proceed to give Scholar's Mate 3 moves later, for a 1st-turn score of 3. Even better would be to give Fool's Mate for a score of 2.

It depends on the players, and how they choose to play. In games featuring opposite-side castling, reckless pawn storms, and all-or-nothing mating attacks, the answer would be "virtually never" (which is one reason why I said that I was worried the game(s) may only appeal to serious problemists). On the other hand, middlegames with equal material and symmetrical pawn formations, as well as most endings with equal material, are all very likely to see one or both player(s) approaching the "danger zone" on the scoreboard.

You also have to watch out for potentially forced move repetitions. Since there is no provision for draw claims in "War of Mates", such repetitions can be deadly. If there's no safe way out, and the opponent will be slower to reach 500 points, then the position is [suddenly] resignable.

The game also lends itself rather well to... uh, let's just call it "calibration" ;)  500 can be replaced by 250, or whatever number the players want, without actually changing anything intrinsic about the variant itself.