On Apr 16, 4:48 pm, Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:

The question of *meaningful* differences is more
interesting. I don't see any meaningful difference
between playing on an 8x1000 board and playing on an
8x1002 board. But the loss of meaningfulness is
gradual; where exactly does it reach zero?

But what about the variant on an 8 x 3,698,201,443,...,828,216 board,
where the ... stands for a number of digits which, if printed in 4
point type, in the pages of a thick telephone directory, would require
enough of those volumes to cover Manhattan Island to a height of one
mile?

The number of practical variants of chess that real humans can play is
strictly finite - yet people keep coming up with unexpected new ideas
for variants.

John Savard