I don't care. Nobody cares. Not even your mum, she told me yesterday.
Does most of the world really love the stalemate factor?
why not 1/2 point for the side that got stalemated and 3/4 point for the side who delivered it. no one said it had to split evenly.
Hmm, that's interesting. What about when material is equal and there's a stalemate?
@Ubzugagir:
To be honest I'm not really trying to persuade you against the rule change, but the idea brings up a few interesting questions which I was curious to see you discuss further.
So, I do think the idea of getting rid of the checking rule is better, and might be an interesting experiment to try. As I say it's a more consistent rule than what I understood your original post to be suggesting, apologies if I misunderstood.
Regarding checkmate/stalemate/zugzwang, I'd still say there's a sound logical reason for distinguishing between them under current rules. In zugzwang, legal moves are available to the defnder, but all available moves lead to a catastrophic collapse of their position in some way. Assuming we leave the checking rule alone, ie you can't move your King into check or leave him in check, then both stalemate and checkmate are different to zugzwang because the defender has no legal moves. But in one the King is currently attacked, in the other he isn't. That's a fairly substantial difference between the two situations, from my point of view. Big enough to justify the two conclusions being scored as drastically differently as they currently are? I admit that's probably a question of taste and tradition, to a large extent. Let me ask, out of curiosity, what you would say to a system that scored stalemate as 0.75 - 0.25 in favour of the stalemater?
Re the material and endgame issue, I think you misunderstood me slightly. My argument wasn't that the game would simply become a question of winning a pawn with the stalemate rule removed. Obviously there would still be people who would play sacrificial chess and be rewarded for it with victories, certainly outside of the top level. It's more that doing away with stalemate, and making endings significantly easier to win when up a pawn or two would encourage more people to play it safe, and lead to fewer of those sort of games, especially among the experts. I also don't think your example of knight and King vs King is terribly reassuring to people worried about the effects of the proposal on King and pawn endings. Between players of equal strength King and pawn endings with one side up a pawn are just so much commoner than any ending where one side has an extra knight that the suggestion that the proportion of endgames decided relatively quickly by a small material would be dramatically increased really isn't affected.
I admit I may have overstated the potential harm of removing the check rule on beginners, by the way.
@Ubzugagir:
To be honest I'm not really trying to persuade you against the rule change, but the idea brings up a few interesting questions which I was curious to see you discuss further.
So, I do think the idea of getting rid of the checking rule is better, and might be an interesting experiment to try. As I say it's a more consistent rule than what I understood your original post to be suggesting, apologies if I misunderstood.
Regarding checkmate/stalemate/zugzwang, I'd still say there's a sound logical reason for distinguishing between them under current rules. In zugzwang, legal moves are available to the defnder, but all available moves lead to a catastrophic collapse of their position in some way. Assuming we leave the checking rule alone, ie you can't move your King into check or leave him in check, then both stalemate and checkmate are different to zugzwang because the defender has no legal moves. But in one the King is currently attacked, in the other he isn't. That's a fairly substantial difference between the two situations, from my point of view. Big enough to justify the two conclusions being scored as drastically differently as they currently are? I admit that's probably a question of taste and tradition, to a large extent. Let me ask, out of curiosity, what you would say to a system that scored stalemate as 0.75 - 0.25 in favour of the stalemater?
Re the material and endgame issue, I think you misunderstood me slightly. My argument wasn't that the game would simply become a question of winning a pawn with the stalemate rule removed. Obviously there would still be people who would play sacrificial chess and be rewarded for it with victories, certainly outside of the top level. It's more that doing away with stalemate, and making endings significantly easier to win when up a pawn or two would encourage more people to play it safe, and lead to fewer of those sort of games, especially among the experts. I also don't think your example of knight and King vs King is terribly reassuring to people worried about the effects of the proposal on King and pawn endings. Between players of equal strength King and pawn endings with one side up a pawn are just so much commoner than any ending where one side has an extra knight that the suggestion that the proportion of endgames decided relatively quickly by a small material would be dramatically increased really isn't affected.
I admit I may have overstated the potential harm of removing the check rule on beginners, by the way.
Howdy Iba... my turn for apologies. In my @you post, I threw in some comments that were directed in response to things other people said earlier in the thread. There were implications that my post just turned chess into materialism... thus I mentioned the lone knight to illustrate that I wasn't trying to say 'whoever has more pieces wins' but rather who can use their material to force the opposing king to his death (always with the understanding that there would be no check/free outs for the king.) Just to repeat from the last post, I believe it would still require the better player, in order to be the one who has decimated his opponent's forces completely, and still retains a pawn himself to kill the king with. The proposition was just put forth on the idea that more games would result in wins, but you'd still have to be the better player to get that win. I don't know that it's fair to say that it "dumbs down" chess, when if anything it might make stronger players beat weaker players more consistently. You might have to work even harder to be in the 'stronger players' class.
As for whether this change (less chances to bail out if you play risky) would make people play consistently more passively, that may possibly be true, but it's a sad thing. Who wants to play chess just to try to not lose!
The score change is a very interesting thought which I hadn't had/heard of before this thread. I don't know how practical it may be, but there's just something cop-out-ish about stalemate that makes me feel like the stalemater deserves more credit than 1/2-1/2!
Final words, I still don't know my own mind :P but it was fun chatting. Cheers
why not 1/2 point for the side that got stalemated and 3/4 point for the side who delivered it. no one said it had to split evenly.