A comment in the original article says it best: ... Changing the rules tends to neutralize acquired knowledge ... and beginning players like this because it levels the playing field.
^This, but its a good thing. Something that irks me about Chess is that at the high level the conventional wisdom is to memorize openings and gambits rather than derive moves from some sort of first principals. IMO this undermines the entire point of a strategy game.
On the other hand the best player in the world is known to be a player who puts less effort into opening prep and takes his opponents out of book very frequently.