I also reject this claim and augment the mention of bughouse with crazyhouse, which is basically a two-player version of bughouse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazyhouse
Crazyhouse has a much higher branching factor than regular chess, and because dead pieces come back onto the board, the game cannot be attacked with endgame tables.
I also personally find suicide chess and atomic chess quite interesting. I can't make the claim that they are more interesting than the original, but they do require delightfully interesting changes in mentality. And endgame analysis in each of these variants is vastly different from regular chess with some beautiful patterns.
Crazyhouse has a much higher branching factor than regular chess, and because dead pieces come back onto the board, the game cannot be attacked with endgame tables.
I also personally find suicide chess and atomic chess quite interesting. I can't make the claim that they are more interesting than the original, but they do require delightfully interesting changes in mentality. And endgame analysis in each of these variants is vastly different from regular chess with some beautiful patterns.