More logical way to play chess

I propose the following, more logical, way to play chess:

1. You are not being warned about check, and if you put your king under check, nothing stops you from making that move and you can't undo it any more than any other move. This move has two possible consequences: 

a) Your partner takes your kind on the next move and you lose the game

b) Your partner is just as careless as you are, so they don't notice the opportunity to take your king, make some other move, and then the game continues 

2. If there is a stalemate, its NOT a draw. On the contrary, on the next move the king will be taken and whoever takes the king wins. Unless, of course, they are sloppy and miss an opportunity to take a king in which case the game would continue. 

3. If you make a checkmate, you haven't won yet. You will have to take the king on the next move. If you don't notice the opportunity to take the king, the game will continue. Or, even better example: if you make a checkmate, and then run out of time right before you had a chance to actually take a king, then you would LOSE the game for running out of time, despite the fact that if you had an extra couple of seconds you would have won. Of course, that is already the case with what happens a move before checkmate. But I am saying the same should be true for actual checkmate as well since when you make a checkmate you didn't win yet, you have to do one more move and take a king in order to win 

4. Its perfectly fine to castle through check. Of course if you castle INTO a check (that is, if the final spot your king takes is under the threat) then your king will be taken next move (unless your partner is careless) and you will lose. ON THE OTHER HAND, if you castle THROUGH check but NOT into check, then there is no way your partner can possibly take your king, so the game will continue and you won't lose. 

5. If only two kings are left, that doesn't make it a draw: two partners can just keep moving their kings as fast as they can until either someone runs out of time or someone accidentally puts their king next to their opponents king and lose. Of course, however, people can AGREE to have a draw AT ANY POINT. So yes, they can agree to have a draw when there are only two kings left (just like they can at any other position) which they probably will. But they aren't "forced" to do that. 

6. In line of items 3 and 5, if person A runs out of time, but person B doesn't have enough mating material, then still person B wins regardless. From formal point of view, you can't formally say that person B doesn't have enough mating material. You can, however, formally say that person A ran out of time. Thats why person B still wins. 

7. In order to know whether your king is allowed to castle or not, you can't be expected to remember whether your king and rook made any moves in the past. So in order to avoid having to remember it, I propose the following rule. When the game begins, kings and rooks have hats on them. When a king or rook makes a move, its hat is being taken off (unless it was taken off already). Only when a king and rook both still have a hat they are allowed to castle. Now, to make it even more logical, you can even make it so that all pieces have hats in them that are being taken off upon the first move. Since only king and rook can castle, in case of all other pieces the whole hat thing becomes a useless exercize. But from the pure formal point of view you can't argue that its useless so you can still do it. But with this I am a bit more flexible: saying only king and rook has a hat is still perfectly logical. So I am okay either way. As long as king and rooks have a hat, that would take care of making castle move logical, and then as far as other pieces having a hat that can be up to aesthetic taste. 

Lets solve chess before we add variant #436,843,951,234,723,443,250 to the mix.

My version of chess is objectively more logical. The fact that it happened to be more obscure is just a result of unfortunate misjudgement of people that created chess. The logic is simple: if the whole point of the game is to test how well you notice things, why are you expected to notice something like being in check? And if there is something special about the position a move BEFORE your king is taken (be it checkmate or stalemate or whatever), why not make something special about position TWO moves before (as in, see you would be checkmated next move, so lets not bother making next move you already lost), or THREE moves before, and so forth? Where would you stop? And similarly, if you are prevented from putting your king under check, why aren't you prevented from other bad moves -- such as a move that "doesn't" put your king into check yet still guarantees checkmate a couple of moves later? Where is the line between the stupid moves you are prevented from making and stupid moves you aren't? The game whose express purpose is to take a king and that is devoit of any special treatments of any positions before that (be it checkmate or stalemate or whatever), and also devoit of any barriers against any kinds of stupid moves (including putting your king under check) is by far more logical version. 

I do agree that your way of playing chess is more logical. But nevertheless i prefer the traditional way. I think it's fun that the weaker part sometimes have the chance to get stalemated.

I also don't think it would be fun to play with only the kings. just to see who is moving fastest. 

The player that makes and illegal move should lose the game. If and only if the opponent notice before he makes his move. It is fair that it is more risky to put the king in check than to hang the queen.

much of this is not playable.   5 for example, whoever is backed into a corner loses, and due to king opposition, someone will be backed into a corner and lose.  Two awesome players who fought down to a draw and the winner is effectively randomly determined by whoever got to go first after all the captures?  Not a good rule.

7 is a joke, right?

The idea of taking the king is not new, and its a known varient which rolls up most of the other suggestions.   It adds a bit of extra spice to uber fast blitz type games, which are worthless anyway.  It does nothing for slower games assuming the players are not total beginners.

2) what about this kind of stalemate? (white to move)

Thats an interesting question. I guess, since you can't "logically" prove that you can't make any moves, what would happen is that the person under stalemate will just sit there and not make any moves at all, then eventually he will run out of time and lose. Or, if they want to save time, they can always resign. 

To sum it up, the rule 2 can be further elaborated as follows:

2a) If the stalemate includes the situation where there ARE legal moves, they just put your king under threat (and yes, moves that put king under threat are still legal), then you put your king under threat, your opponents takes your king and you lose

2b) If the stalemate has nothing to do with your future moves putting king under threat but rather it has to do with the fact that you are physically prevented from making any moves, then you would have to lose by either resigning or running out of time.

But in all cases stalemated party ends up losing, just through different mechanisms.

Can you show me a position where one king backs another king into corner? I didnt think such position was possible. Without loss of generality, lets say the white king is at (1,1). If black king is at (1,3) then white king can move to (2,1), if black king is at (3,1) then white king can move to (1,2), if black king is at (3,3) then white king can move to either (1,2) or (2,1). On the other hand, if black king is at (1,2), (2,2) or (2,1) then white king can take the black king and win. But that won't have anything to do with black king being backed into the corner; that would be the case of black player putting his king under threat out of sheer stupidity. 

As far as 7, no its not a joke. A logical progression of events is when event number n can be only caused by event number n-1. So if a person is incapable to castle on move 57 because the king has moved on move 43, that doesn't seem very logical. On the other hand, if the king can't castle on move 57 because on the move 56 it didn't have hat on it, then yes its logical. And the reason he didn't have hat on move 56 has nothing to do with what happened at move 43. No, its just that he happened not to have a hat at move 55 and there was no moves available that involves putting hat back on. And in the same fashion we can justify why it had no hat on move 54, and 53 and so forth. And then when we reach move 44, then we say it didn't have a hat at 44 because he made a move on 43. Since 44=43+1, that is, in fact, perfectly logical, nothing wrong with that. 

Taking king DOES have an impact on slower games too. Like what I said about stalemate not being a draw, that is logically connected to the idea that you can put a king under threat, after all, and that, in turn, is connected to possibility of taking a king. Lets put it this way: if putting a king under threat is illegal, then you can't take a king AND stalemate becomes a draw. On the other hand if putting a king under threat is legal, then you CAN take a king, and stalemate is no longer a draw. 

And also, apart from stalemate, this rule variation also implies that you can castle through check or castle out of check (as long as you are not castling into check) and this might possibly change some situations in non-trivial way. 

By the way regarding what you said that only beginners can lose by accidentally putting the king under threat, when I played by those rules I ended up seeing myself losing. Well I am not a chess expert (my rating fluctuates between 800-s and 900-s) but I am not entirely a beginner either. And yes the people I played with were losing this way as well, just less often than me. I would probably say twice less often, but we both lost our kings a number of times. 

Yeah trying to get stalemated is a fun challenge, but I still say its illogical. So I would go with logic. After all if we were willing to break rules of logic with other things who knows how many other fun challenges we could come up with, but I think logic is more important than fun. Particularly because stalemate doesn't make much sense either. So what would happen in the real war when one of the parties can't move? What would save them from losing the war? 

As far as it not being fun to play with only kings just to see who will move faster, thats why I mentioned how they can AGREE to have a draw. I am still allowing people to make a draw BY AGREEMENT. All I am saying is that I am abandoning automatic draw. You see in conventional chess once you have only two kings left, the players aren't even asked if they want a draw, the draw just happens automatically. But I am saying no, they have to ask for a draw and both agree.

But I do see one reason why a player might not agree for a draw. If one of the players have much more time left than the other player, then he might prefer to just keep moving kings as fast as possible since he figures his opponent would be more likely to run out of time than he does. But in this case his opponent might figure that he would lose anyway (for the same reason) and resign. So in this case, the game will still end, but instead of ending at a draw it would end at the player with less time left resigning and losing. But then again, no one is forced to resign, so its still possible that the person with less time left might decide to take his chances and hope to move his king so much faster that he would catch up on all of his time, unlikely but possible. And in this case you might, in fact, end up seeing both players moving kings as fast as possible (with the "winner" thinking he will win anyway and the "loser" trying to catch up the speed). On the other hand, if both players have comparable amount of time left, that would be the situation where the probability of them both agreeing for a draw would be higher, or so I guess. But who knows I could be wrong. It might be interesting to conduct a statistical experiment and see what would in fact happen. 

One way to avoid this situation is to change the rules regarding time. Instead of putting a limit on a total time, one can put a limit on the time per move, so that a game can continue indefinitely as long as each player makes, say, less than a minute per move and, as soon as one of the players takes more than a minute a game ends automatically. With this timing rule, if only two kings are left, both players will see that it will never take more than a minute to make a move, thus the game will never end UNLESS they agree for a draw, and this realization will force them to agree for a draw right away. But, of course, this would take away from the challenges that come along with timed games. And no, you won't be able to change the timing rule in response to specific situation. The whole point is that you can't define said situation (which is the very reason why I am opposed to automatic draw) and if you can't formally define something, you can't change timing rules in response to it either. So basically time-per-move rule would have to be the rule you use througout the entire game, not just the end. 

So I guess we have a choice: either use total time in how you time players, which would be fun throughout "less trivial" parts of the game, but then you would have to face a "side effect" of a competition who moves king faster in case two kings are left. Or you could choose to time each move without computing total time. In this case you are guaranteed that once only two kings are left both players would agree for a draw, but at the same time it would take away from some of the timing challenges up until then. But the point remains that whatever you do you have to be logical and consistent, that part can't be sacrificed. 

Let me stress that you would have to have one version of a timing or another, in order to prevent a losing opponent from stalling forever. So if you want to play untimed game, you can instead play timing-per-move game where each person is allowed 3 hours to make a move. That way losing opponent would resign, since he knows he would lose anyway 3 hours later. 

As far as what you said about illegal move, what does it ever have to do with putting the king under threat? My whole point is that putting king under threat is perfectly legal, which is the entire mission of this game. I mean, is it illegal to just give up all your pieces, other than king, for free, just because you are in a bad mood? No, its not illegal, its just stupid. Well same goes for putting king under threat: its not illegal either, its just stupid. But people should be allowed to make stupid moves, and the fact that the move is stupid doesn't give them a right to undo it any more than undoing any other move. So if you put a king under threat, no you can't undo it, you just have to sit and pray really hard that your opponent won't notice it and won't take it. But if opponent takes it then oh well, you lost the game. 

sounds like you are a patzer who misses 1 move threats, for those who don't this just comes off as dull and takes away from the sophistication. 

But see, I didn't even know I would miss those one move threats before I tried this version of a game. The point is that I simply like more logican version of the game regardless; but then when I found out I keep losing kings more othen than I thought, I was like "oh yeah and that too". 

"As far as what you said about illegal move, what does it ever have to do with putting the king under threat?"

illegal move is handled the way suggest it is practically the same that it's just a stupid move.

About the time pr. move. I think it's an idea to be tried. Somehow it would even be kind of relaxing. But sometimes you might to limt how long a game can go on.

All in All i don't like your new and more logical way to play chess. I can see your points. I just prefer the tradional way of playing. It's matter of taste

I suggest a version where illegal move is handled in completely different way from the way putting king under threat is handled, thus stressing that putting king under threat is perfectly legal. So, an example of an illegal move would be moving rook diagonally. If one moves the rook diagonally, then they would simply be asked to move the rook right back and take some other move. The only price they will pay is that the time when they move rook diagonally and back would be counted as a time they were "thinking about the move" and since the game is timed, they can't "mess around" for too long. ON THE OTHER HAND if someone puts a king under threat, no they won't be able to move the king back (and even if they wanted to move the king back they won't be allowed to). The reason they won't be able to mvoe the king back is that the move they have made is perfectly legal. And the fact that the move is legal is the reason why they would actually have to face consequences.

I agree that the version of "time per move" is more relaxing. And no, you don't have to terminate the game. You can always save the game (if its on the computer) or take a photo (if its on the chess board) and then continue it later. Incidentally, something else just occurred to me: maybe you don't have to have a draw at all: instead of a draw, you can "save the game for later" and if the game is "boring enough" then neither party will ever return to it later. And of course "saving the game for later" would have to be something both sides agree upon -- just to make sure that neither side has an "advantage" in terms of "thinking about best move" as they wait till later; and, more importantly, so that if one of the sides is losing they don't postpone losing till later and stall indefinitely. Thats why the game can be postponed only if both sides agree.  

I agree with you its a matter of taste. Well in my case I certainly prefer the logical way of playing.