In a non-tournament arena, if someone doesn't notice that they have checkmated you and continues playing, then the checkmate is technically nulled.
There are types of chess variations in which checkmate is not the winning move, but capturing the king is. In others, you must capture all the other pieces, no such thing as a checkmate.
Killgoose - excellent point.
Very interesting replies, and unfortunately I have to apologize.. .I'm not a tournament player so I'm not completely sure about what I had in mind.
I was also extremely tired when i made the post so i probably didn't word it as well as I should have.
Anyway... someone please correct me if my understanding is wrong, it very well could be.
I tell people who ask about the rules that the King is never taken in chess.. that to win a game of chess you have to literally trap the king, and declare checkmate before the king is taken.
But to my understanding, in blitz chess (and this is where i could be wrong) if a player doesn't realize he is in check and moves without removing the check, the opponent can indeed capture the king with his next move ending the game. This is a win without a checkmate.
Here is what I had in mind then...
So if this were a blitz game, as I understand it this would be a legitimate ending... though I'm not at all sure about it.
I posted this thread right before going to bed, and now i'm sure i'm in for it... so go ahead and let me have it!
I know... when i reread my original post i thought.. i could have made that much more clear.
I apologize...
The funny thing about this is I was in a deep sleep when i was awoken by my kids. I have no idea if i was dreaming about chess, but it was the first thought that occurred to me.. besides of course the blessing of birth control.
I thought, what if... and it went from there. I quickly went down to make the post, still blurry from my REM stage, and ran back to bed.
this would technically be putting black into checkmate in a blitz game, and yet any arbiter would obviously allow black the next move to take white's king winning the game.
To be really legalistically technical about (and that is the point of this discussion I think) the arbiter does not allow black to extend the game beyond white's checkmate in order to "take the white king" -- taking the king is just a commonly accepted way of showing-proving the real game winning condition, which is that white has made an illegal move. Black wins because white has made an illegal move in a blitz game. Black's taking the white king would _not_ be a part of the game score, the game ends 0-1 when black claims victory citing white's illegal move. But there is, in this, a slight retroactivity, because the claim comes after white's move... but the condition the claim is based on is simultaneous with white's move.
If the game was being played with regular time controls... I think the conditions of touch move are enforced, but there's no other penalty and in fact if white has no legal moves with the piece he touched, he's free to make correct his illegal move by making any legal move he wishes (I don't know how the arbiter rectifies the clocks).
Thats kind of what I thought it might be.
Also, to clarify... in tournament conditions at regular time controls... what exactly happens when i put my opponent in check and he makes an illegal move? I claim an illegal move and he is held to the touch rule if he has a legal move with that piece?
I would imagine the proper way to handle this situation is to stop the clock, bring over the arbiter or TD for the discussion?
Which brings up another question... when a dispute happens, is it customary to try to clear things up between the players first, before a third party is involved? Or is it always necessary to call over a TD before the discussion begins?
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