Accidental Castling Fix

Hello Chess.com Community, I've sent a suggestion using the Make a Suggestion tool on the website for measures to prevent accidental castling and would like others who would like to do so to also send this suggestion so that it gets fixed faster. Here is the message I sent for context and if you would like to copy and send it yourself: Could you add a roughly 1.5-second time window between tapping the king and tapping the rook to castle? This would make it so that if the time between the two taps is less than the window, castling will occur, and if it is greater than the window, it will simply select the rook. I'm suggesting this because it has happened to me a lot as well as opponents of mine that we touched the king and then after thinking for a while decided to touch the rook, and that ended up castling when we did not intend to.

Have you ever played over the board tournament chess? Touch move is the rule.

There's no putting your finger on the piece while you move it about and look around.  You can't put it back and move another piece.

I suggest you try to employ it online. Don't touch a piece unless you are ready to move it.

Thanks for your reply, notmtwain. I hope you're not trolling, but assuming you aren't, I'm aware of the rules for touch move chess. However, that is irrelevant because when I am playing chess on my phone, I can touch any number of pieces before making a move with no problem. The only exception to this is the case of touching the king followed by the rook in a castle-able position. It is clear that the intent of the game designers was not to enforce a touch move rule; otherwise, I would not be able to move any piece after touching another piece on my phone. I am just suggesting a fix to make castling consistent with other moves. It either needs to be fixed so that all pieces can equally be touched without consequence, or alternatively fixed so that all pieces follow touch move rules and thus cannot be moved after touching another piece.

I use drag and drop and you castle by dragging the king two squares to the right or the left.

I guess I've never castled by mistake in 9,000 games.

I seriously doubt if they would ever implement your suggestion. With lag adjustments, it would cause more problems than it solved.

It would be nice if they had a drag and drop setting on the app. I suppose I'll suggest that as well as a potential solution. I'm glad for you that you haven't felt the pain of accidental castling. I respectfully disagree with any implication that it isn't a common issue. I certainly hope they implement my suggestion(s) or any other solution such as making castling only occur when you touch the king and then the space two spaces over rather than it occurring both in that case and in the case that you touch the king and then the rook. If you'd like, please explain how lag adjustments would interfere with a time-based solution to accidental castling.

@RainbowSandcastle hmm drag and drop should be a choice on the app at least when I play. I just grab the king and pull it three squares to the right or left to be sure, and it works

I use drag and drop, as well; however, I always use a laptop or desk top computer. While I try not to touch pieces, I sometimes do.

If the problem is touching the Rook after touching the King, a simple solution might be to touch a pawn (or Bishop, Knight etc) after touching the King. This would stop the auto castle. Then, if you wish to castle, touch the King again followed by the Rook. Good luck. 

Thanks for your reply. Drag and drop does work on the app, but I meant that there should be a drag-and-drop setting such that, when turned on, we can only move via drag and drop and not via tapping. We could turn that setting on and wouldn't have to worry about accidental castling due to an unfortunate sequence of taps.

Thank you for your reply, m_connors.

 

I'm aware that we can prevent accidental castling by touching another piece after the king before touching the rook, but if that worked, it wouldn't be an accident, would it?

But, that's the idea, failing a better solution get into the habit of always touching a pawn after touching the King. Not a good habit to get into, especially if you'll be playing OTB at some point later on. But it would stop the auto castling. I do see another possible downside, however. If after touching the pawn and you wanted to castle, you might make the Rook side of the move and found you've only moved the Rook and not castled!

We try to prevent accidents by preparing for them. If you always touch a pawn after touching your King when contemplating castling, you will never, ever, auto castle again if you don't want to. If you decide (finally) that you do want to castle, you touch the King then immediately touch the Rook. It's a "work-around", not ideal, but should work . . .

Well, I appreciate your effort to come up with a workaround.

I recently found out the correct forum to post in for the app, so this post doesn't serve its purpose here really. Thanks anyway! 🙂

I got so frustrated after yet another accidental castle yesterday that I finally thought "Wait a second, maybe the lichess app has an option in settings that fixes the problem." It turns out they do! So i will play there. To my fellow chess.com accidental castlers, you are welcome.

Yeah, This accidentally castling has ruined at least 3 games for me. I don't care about playing in tournaments, I'm playing on my phone or computer. I click pieces as I'm thinking. I'm thinking about a king side castle? Click the king. No, I should move my other rook to defend. OOPS, I just castled the wrong way. Game over.

Yeah, the other forum wasn't much help either. I ended up opting to turn on move confirmations. That little extra step has helped me avoid not only several accidental castles, but also many silly mistakes.

I have never accidentally castled - but I have on a couple of occasions mouse-slipped moving the King one square instead of castling - a joy to behold.

You should turn on the "show legal moves" setting. Then if you click on the king you'll see dots on the chessboard.

If you decide not to castle and move the rook instead, the dots will remind you to click the king a second time to deselect it.

It's an obvious problem with an easy fix. All that needs to be done for players who don't drag and drop should be that they castle by touching the king, and then touching either c1/g1. Easy. If you don't play by touching spaces it isn't going to impact your game, and if chess.com is going to have the touch spaces option available, they should make it cohesive with the way that the game works in general. If I have the king highlighted, I tap the queen and then the queen is highlighted. There shouldn't be a separate rule for what happens when I touch the rook. This is a huge problem for touch space players and it is not a problem on competing apps.

I like your suggestion for standard chess.

I think they made castling the same for standard chess and chess960.