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I have created two engines that can play 10x8 Chess, Joker80 and Fairy-Max. They are derivatives of my normal Chess engines Joker and micro-Max. Fairy-Max is acually a more general variant-playing engine, which can be configured by the user to also play games on boards of other sizes, with user-definable pieces. I also adapted the popular WinBoard graphical user interface (GUI) for Chess to handle many variants, amongst which the Asian Chess variants Xiangqi and Shogi. Both my engines can play 10x8 Chess under this WinBoard_F, using normal WinBoard protocol to communicate with it. Several other WB 10x8 engines have become available since then. And alternative GUI that suppots WB protocol has become available as well (ChessGUI by Mathias Gemuh).
Besides that, I started organizing tournaments for WinBoard 10x8 engines. One of the aims of playing the engines against each other is to establish a rating list for them (the Carreblanca rating list). Accurate and credible determination of ratings is a major effort, which will also involve other people. I have opened up my PC at home (by configuring it as a web server), and developed a viewer in Javascript to enable live viewing of the games in progress by anyone in the world, using no other software than a normal web browser.
Chess on an 80-squares board with two unconventional pieces, moving as Bishop + Knight, and as Rook + Knight, respectively, (in the same sense as a Queen moves like Rook + Bishop), was invented as early as 1617, by Pietro Carrera. He placed the new pieces in the opening array between Rooks and Knights. The game only became popular, however, after world champion Jose Capablanca started promoting it as the successor of modern Chess. Capablanca also proposed the names for the new pieces by which they are most commonly referred to today, namely Archbishop (A = B + N) and Chancellor (C = R + N). His opening array differed from that of Carrera, putting A and C between Knights and Bishops. Before that, in 1874, Brithish grand master Henry Bird had proposed a variant where A and C started between Bishops and King/Queen. Since then, many variants differning in opening array have been proposed. Most notable amongst those is the patented variant Gothic Chess developed by Ed Trice. It's opening array has the Chancellor standing between King and Queen, and the Archbishop on the other side of the King.