How I discovered color bound piece walls

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acgusta2

Feb 5, 2021

I decided to talk about how I got the idea of color bound piece walls.

In standard chess there are some positions that are book draws, in which there are legal sequences of moves, in which one player gets checkmated, but no legal sequences of moves, in which the other player gets checkmated. An example of a book draw, in which there is a sequence of legal moves, in which one player gets checkmate, but non, in which the other player gets checkmated is a King and Rook vs a King and Bishop, as if the rook is in a position to block the kings escape square, then it is in a position to block the check from the bishop.

I began to wonder whether there could be a position, in which the game would end in a draw with best play from both players, and in which there are legal sequences of moves, in which one player gets checkmated, but none in which the other gets checkmated, and the player that can get checkmated by some legal sequence of moves has something other than a king and bishop seeing as there are more exotic dead draws than king and bishop verses king, or king and knight verses king involving pawn walls.

I couldn't find any position that would meet all three criteria that are reachable from the standard starting position, so began to wonder if such a position would be possible for a custom starting position using a board editor, and came up with this position.

In this position, with best play from both players the game would end in a draw, however black can help white checkmate him/her by capturing one of the rook that is blocking the queens from moving, but white can never get help the black pawn move, and so white can never get checkmated.

Soon after coming up with the above position I figured out that the queens are forced to only move like bishops, meaning that they are equivalent to bishops. Soon after that I realized that I could create a position, that has a type of symmetric even though one player has a king plus 32 bishops and n queens and the other player has a king plus n bishops.

For instant this position is symmetric even though at first glance it looks like white is up in material

notmtwain

Feb 5, 2021

Hmm.