Do you have to compete promotion to win ?

[John McKenna]

I think I agree with Nick on this one.

Jesper and Stewart have jumped through hoops of fire backwards to prove their points, but it's been all smoke and mirrors to me.

There's usually one small fly in any ointment, however.

Once capturing the king becomes legal people will start capturing them when it's illegal to do so.

The real problem is the fast and furious nature of blitz chess - who can keep up with what's going down?

[Stewart Reuben]

Nick >Regarding your question, I think that Kh8-h7 should be legal because kings move like that. Pa4-a6 should be illegal because pawns don't move like that.<

Oh no, kings don't move like that according to 1.2. But, you finally answered the question after I asked 5 times. That you didn't answer the point about Nick chess requiring 10 changes to the Laws of Chess is unsurprising. I award you two titles: World Champion of Misdirection. World Champion of Gratuitous Insults. I don't enter that contest. My insults are never gratuitous.

I only thought of the following just now. White Ke1 Ra1. Black Qa4 Kh8. White plays 1 O-O-O. In chess this is an illegal move. What happens in Nick chess?

Let us move on to a more interesting matter and one that touches, inter alia, on the original subject of this thread. There are various ways in which players may behave incorrectly. Let us list some and consider what actions the arbiter should take. Currently most such incorrect actions result in the opponent receiving an extra 2 minutes. I recommended that because, having various time penalties, meant the probability of a mistake by the arbiter was too great. The opponent gets the extra time because then default doesn't come into it. Most people don't like players to lose by default. The only people I know who do are Nick and Kirsan.

1. LATE ARRIVAL. Penalty either instant loss, or time on the clock before arrival. Disruption substantial. Cheating possible, but unlikely.
2. MOBILE PHONES MAKING A NOISE. Penalty varies with the event. Disruption substantial. Cheating more likely if it DOESN'T go off.
3. PUTTING THE KING NEXT TO THE KING. Penalty standardplay 2 minutes first offence. Rapidplay, blitz loss. Disruption slight. Cheating highly nearly certain.
4. CLAIMING A DRAW BY 3-FOLD OCCURRENCE. Penalty 2 minutes. Disruption substantial. Cheating possible, but more likely a genuine error.
5. PUSHING A PAWN TO THE 8TH RANK BUT NOT SUBSTITUTING IT FOR A NEW PIECE, BT PERHAPS AN UPSIDE DOWN ROOK. Penalty 2 minutes standardplay, loss r or b. Disruption quite a lot. Cheating possible.
6. A2-A5 IN AN ENDGAME. Penalty 2 minutes, loss r or b. Disruption quite a lot. Cheating highly probable.
7. 1 E4 D6 2 BB5+ NF6. Penalty 2 minutes, loss r or b. Disruption negligible. Cheating highly unlikely.
8. 1 D4 NF6 2 C4 D5 3 NC3 BB4. Penalty 2 minutes, loss r or b. Disruption some. Cheating highly unlikely.
9. Castling out of check. Penalty 2 minutes, loss r or b. Disruption some. Cheating highly unlikely.
9. Castling out of check. Penalty 2 minutes, loss r or b. Disruption some. Cheating unlikely.

Do add in your own as you wish. Change 7.1 to read something like.
7.1 If an irregularity occurs, the arbiter shall use his best judgement to determine the penalty, if any. In his decision he shall into account the amount of disruption caused, the likelihood of intent, the likelihood of deliberately cheating.

I hope most of you will agree this puts to much power in the hands of the arbiter. But it certainly simplifies the Laws and makes them more concise.

[John McKenna]

This all smacks of legislation for its own sake.

The original question, by a practising player, was - Do you have to compete (sic.) pawn promotion to win?

It has certainly led to a lot of competition between different schools (rules) of thought.

Perhaps in order to step back from the technicalities it should be compared to this -

http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-inter ... ps?ref=yfp

Did those rule changes generate as much discussion as what as gone on here, I wonder.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

A question for Nick: if a player cannot make a legal move with their king (but is able to move other pieces) and tries to make an illegal move with the king that doesn't leave it open to capture (e.g. castling over the squares where it would be captured), are they forced to take that move back and play another move with the king (as they have touched it), thus being forced into moving the king to where it can be captured? Which of the illegal king moves should be 'forced' ? Currently, the player would be forced to not move the king and instead move another piece. Under your rules, wouldn't they be forced to lose the game?

[Michael Farthing]

O what a tangled web we weave
when first some rules we do conceive!

[NickFaulks]

O what a tangled web we weave
when first some rules we do conceive!

Yes, but in my opinion the web became tangled when someone decided that a move which lost the king should be taken back and replaced with a different one. I would like to see that part untangled.

[John McKenna]

The original question was valid enough and it was about applying the existing 'laws' (I'd call them rules) of chess (but as so often happens that leads to people discussing how the 'laws' could be changed, &c. e&c. &c... )

Here is a good one for you rules lawyers to chew over.

One guy is clearly qinning but down to his last few seconds. He pushes his pawn to the 8th rank and shouts queen, which would deliver checkmate and end the game.

At the same time his opponent then sees the flag drop and claims a win because the queen piece had not yet been placed on the board, only declared.


Which player gets the win?

So, there's a neologism there 'qinning' - to win by queening.

I agree that the potential 'qinner' loses because no queen was to hand and his flag fell.

Although it has been pointed out that pushing "his pawn to the 8th rank", and leaving it there, instead of removing it from the 7th rank and replacing it with a queen on the 8th is an illegal move, the sorting out of which is another question (possibly already covered in previous pages).

However, all the potential 'qinner' had to do was - stop the clock and ask for a queen to be brought to the board and hope there was time to do the promotion correctly when the clock restarted. I expect that's already been said somewhere in the last 9 pages.

How it's gone from promoting to a queen to capturing a king I am unsure, but one thing I am sure about is that one thing leads to another...

Some interesting practical questions have been asked - like Chris K's

A question for Nick: if a player cannot make a legal move with their king (but is able to move other pieces) and tries to make an illegal move with the king that doesn't leave it open to capture (e.g. castling over the squares where it would be captured), are they forced to take that move back and play another move with the king (as they have touched it), thus being forced into moving the king to where it can be captured? Which of the illegal king moves should be 'forced' ? Currently, the player would be forced to not move the king and instead move another piece. Under your rules, wouldn't they be forced to lose the game?

[NickFaulks]

A question for Nick: if a player cannot make a legal move with their king (but is able to move other pieces) and tries to make an illegal move with the king that doesn't leave it open to capture (e.g. castling over the squares where it would be captured), are they forced to take that move back and play another move with the king (as they have touched it), thus being forced into moving the king to where it can be captured? Which of the illegal king moves should be 'forced' ? Currently, the player would be forced to not move the king and instead move another piece. Under your rules, wouldn't they be forced to lose the game?

Now that's a good question, which is a first. I have in general been making an analogy with blitz chess, as played in the not so distant past when taking kings was standard procedure. However, I have an idea that those games were generally played without a touch move rule ( does anyone remember? ), so that doesn't help.

If you touch your queen and then find that any legal move with it causes it to be lost, you must play one of those moves and risk losing the piece, and thereby the game, if your opponent notices. Logically that should also apply to the king.

[Alex McFarlane]

OK I've been tempted in.

If the king is to be treated as a normal piece then does check exist? People in some versions used to announce check on the queen as well.

If the king is to be treated as a normal piece and can be captured then any move which means that the king moves one square or take part in castling must be allowed. Therefore a king can move into check and risk being taken. Also it should therefore probably be able to castle out of check (since that would be an alien concept) and certainly through check.

I can understand where Nick is coming from and it has a certain logic but when you continue the logic to its conclusion the resulting game is nothing like chess as we know it.

[Ian Thompson]

If you touch your queen and then find that any legal move with it causes it to be lost, you must play one of those moves and risk losing the piece, and thereby the game, if your opponent notices. Logically that should also apply to the king.

You're not comparing like with like.

"If you touch your queen and then find that any legal move with it causes it to be lost, you must play one of those moves and risk losing the piece, and thereby the game, if your opponent notices."

is comparable to

"If you touch your king and then find that any legal move with it allows your opponent to checkmate you next move, you must play one of those moves and risk being checkmated, if your opponent notices."

"If you touch your king and then find it has no legal moves you are free to make a legal move with any other piece on the board."

is comparable to

"If you touch your queen and then find it has no legal moves you are free to make a legal move with any other piece on the board."

[NickFaulks]

If you touch your queen and then find that any legal move with it causes it to be lost, you must play one of those moves and risk losing the piece, and thereby the game, if your opponent notices. Logically that should also apply to the king.

You're not comparing like with like.

"If you touch your queen and then find that any legal move with it causes it to be lost, you must play one of those moves and risk losing the piece, and thereby the game, if your opponent notices."

is comparable to

"If you touch your king and then find that any legal move with it allows your opponent to checkmate you next move, you must play one of those moves and risk being checkmated, if your opponent notices."

"If you touch your king and then find it has no legal moves you are free to make a legal move with any other piece on the board."

is comparable to

"If you touch your queen and then find it has no legal moves you are free to make a legal move with any other piece on the board."

But what does "legal" mean? This is the central pillar of the regulations, and I am suggesting that it is unhelpful.

[Jesper Norgaard]

The statement (1) seems hard for me to accept, but I guess the general idea is you can win a game by capturing a king with a legal move.

Why are you guessing that it is the general idea? It is quite explicitly the exact idea. More interestingly, what I really need to understand, and which you do not begin to explain, is why you find it hard to accept. The sole effect would be that a player would not be permitted / required to take back a particularly bad move. Are you simply concerned with tradition?

No you misunderstand me. I have no problem with defining that the king can be taken by a legal chess move. The statement was "I would like to see the Laws changed in one simple way which has no substantive effect on the game of chess." What I meant is that I think there is a substantive effect on the game of chess - if we make it legal to move the king into check.

Second capturing the king is not an illegal move (as it is today). Third putting your king in check is not an illegal move, but rather a tease to your opponent, will he see it and capture the king?

When you play a move which accidentally gives away an important piece for nothing, do you consider that you are "teasing" your opponent? Most people call this a blunder.

True you are, I call it a blunder too, just trying to be witty.

Fourth the objective of chess is either to checkmate the opponent or capture his king (either win is equivalent to 1 point).

In practice there is already almost no difference - checkmate is merely an announcement that the king will inevitably be captured next move. Please don't let us get bogged down in details about flags falling during this process.

Yes we can leave out the flags falling from this exercise. It won't rock the boat. It may be best to leave out the alternative objective for simplicty, meaning that the objective is checkmate, but capturing the king can obtain the same thing somewhere in a different clause.

You say that some clauses could simply be removed, but I´m trying to figure out which.

You're right, the clauses about illegal moves would have to stay to deal with things like Nc3-e5. They would be invoked far less often, though.
I wonder if you are right that there are more illegal moves exposing the king to check. I have seen many different examples. One is pushing the pawn to the last rank without putting a promotion piece. Then there is goofup of the ent passant move which is popular. There are mixups of different kind of the castling move, not least castling when either the king or the rook has been moved, or over an attacked square. I have seen Bb2 capturing the wrong bishop on f7/g7 when Black's two bishops were standing side-by-side. Then there are double pawn pushes when the pawn is no longer on the initial rank, and pawn captures piece diagonally backwards, instead of diagonally forwards. The knight moving as a bishop. The rook (sometimes turned upside-down) moving diagonally.

In fact you may want to redefine the stalemate rule. Over to you.

Yes, I though I had said that absolutely clearly, but evidently not. I have no desire to change the game of chess in any way, except in relation to the takeback element. The phrase "the player to move has no legal move" would have to be replaced with a different set of words which have the same effect. This cannot be hard, and will not change the set of dead positions.

Now the current article about stalemate is:
"5.2.a The game is drawn when the player to move has no legal move and his king is not in check."
Since moving the king into check is not illegal, you would want this rule to be something like
"5.2.a The game is drawn when the player to move has no legal move except moving his king into check, and his king is not in check."
Can you confirm that this is according to what you wanted above, saying "this cannot be hard"?

[Stewart Reuben]

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
A question for Nick: if a player cannot make a legal move with their king (but is able to move other pieces) and tries to make an illegal move with the king that doesn't leave it open to capture (e.g. castling over the squares where it would be captured), are they forced to take that move back and play another move with the king (as they have touched it), thus being forced into moving the king to where it can be captured? Which of the illegal king moves should be 'forced' ? Currently, the player would be forced to not move the king and instead move another piece. Under your rules, wouldn't they be forced to lose the game?
Nick - Now that's a good question, which is a first. I have in general been making an analogy with blitz chess, as played in the not so distant past when taking kings was standard procedure. However, I have an idea that those games were generally played without a touch move rule ( does anyone remember? ), so that doesn't help.

Note Nick's standard gratuitous insult, this time of Christopher.
The rules for Blitz were only recently standardised and still differ in some places. In England and the US, it was always and is touch move. In Continental Europe it was clock move. That is, while your clock was running, you could take back a move and play a different one.
To try to answer Christopher's question about Nick chess as he didn't answer it. But I could be wrong. Try the position
Ke1, Ra1, Rf1, Pa3. Black Qa4, Ke3.
White tries 1 0-0-0, but has not pressed his clock. The move is illegal and I think this is also true in Nick chess. So he puts the rook and king back. Now he notes that there is no legal move with the king, so he plays 1 Rf2 and only now presses the clock. In blitz this is permissible within the Laws. There is no penalty. The arbiter might invoke 11.5 if repeated.
In Nick chess White can choose between Kd1, Kd2, Ke2 and Kf2. All of those moves leave the king en prise, but are legal. It is different from blitz. Alex McFarlane is absolutely correct. It may be superior, but it isn't chess.

Jesper had a good try at the definition of stalemate in Nick chess. But it wasn't complete.
"5.2.a The game is drawn when the player to move is not in check, has no legal move and his only king moves (if any) place his king in check, or expose his king to check.
I expect that could be improved on.

[Jesper Norgaard]

If you touch your queen and then find that any legal move with it causes it to be lost, you must play one of those moves and risk losing the piece, and thereby the game, if your opponent notices. Logically that should also apply to the king.

You're not comparing like with like.

"If you touch your queen and then find that any legal move with it causes it to be lost, you must play one of those moves and risk losing the piece, and thereby the game, if your opponent notices."

is comparable to

"If you touch your king and then find that any legal move with it allows your opponent to checkmate you next move, you must play one of those moves and risk being checkmated, if your opponent notices."

"If you touch your king and then find it has no legal moves you are free to make a legal move with any other piece on the board."

is comparable to

"If you touch your queen and then find it has no legal moves you are free to make a legal move with any other piece on the board."

But what does "legal" mean? This is the central pillar of the regulations, and I am suggesting that it is unhelpful.

So how can it be made more helpful, Nick? You are not describing how it is unhelpful, and you are not making any suggestions.

[NickFaulks]

Note Nick's standard gratuitous insult, this time of Christopher.

What are you talking about? Whenever I try to have a sensible discussion with a sensible person, you leap in to explain to them that I'm saying the opposite of what I'm actually saying. Please stop interfering in this way, or everything will have to be done by private messages.