If You Could Change One Rule In Chess, What Would It Be?

I never boasted about being one either!

Merely making my contributions

I would place a rule that if you win, you get to play White and if you lose you get to play Black.

I would say castle when in check.

I would make en passant legal at any point of the game, and not only just after the pawn moves two squares forward.

Draws are resolved via eating contest.

I think they added en passant so there wouldn't be too much Lockup.
I liked that movie by the way.

But think what would happen if you didn't have it.
I've seen it in public parks chess.
Not having touch move causes a million more problems than touch move does.
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Moral: At the beginning of a live game - all pieces should be well in their squares - far from the 4 edges.
Otherwise players have an excuse to be 'adjusting' the pieces all game long.
Issue - its a live tournament - your opponent gets up and heads for the washroom.
Now how do you adjust a piece that is somehow touching another square?
Example - a passerby accidentally bumps the table.
Your opponent is not there for you to announce 'I adjust' or ' j'adoube ' .
If you now touch that piece .... uh oh.

There's a very strict rule called 'touch squares'.
Its almost never used or in operation.
If you set a piece down and let go of it and its on two squares or touching the edge of the board and you press your clock - you lose.
If you knock over a piece - you lose.
If you drop a piece off the board - you lose.
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But 'touch-squares' is too strict.
But good players make it a point to keep setting pieces down right in the center of the squares.
They think on their opponents time so they can move more confidently when its their turn.
Good habits lead to more efficient play.
But even in rated games here - players might allow 'takeback'.
In tournaments on the site?
I don't think so. No takebacks.
I don't know though.

@playerafar, your wealth in knowledge is limitless

I think all stalemate, repetition, and castling rules should be kept the same, but I would leave open the possibility of being allowed to just leave a promoted pawn as a stale pawn on the back rank, there are positions which show how this could be beneficial turning an inevitable stalemate into a win or a loss into an inevitable stalemate. Why force people to promote to a piece?

I created a thread about such examples:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/leaving-promoted-pawns-as-pawns-2

Probably having not to pay to get infinite puzzles, lessons, bots, game Review, insights and so much more. If someone gave me a chance to turn this game f2p while having the privileges that you need to pay to have, I would definitely do it.

While that would be nice, it would take away the strategy of controlling those spaces to prevent castling, which is a lot of fun for the person doing it, if not so much for the person who wants to castle.

I was just thinking about a rule where each king gets a "body double" designated at the beginning of the game that can become the king (with a swap) exactly one time per game. I was thinking more of how some rulers have their own body double to fool assassins, rather than a successor, but effectively it would be the same rule.

That piece that moves like a bishop and a knight, is it the king's secret lover/squire? I mean he has a queen, sure, but maybe he grows bored with that life and wants to have his own Hephaestion.

EDIT: Oh, I see it's called a Princess. Well, that makes this post doubly weird.

The hawk moves like a bishop and a knight. It is part of the chess variant Seirawan Chess.

http://www.seirawanchess.com

Regarding the psychology of not wanting touch move ...
its probably related to the psychology of wanting your opponent to let you do 'takeback' and also related to thinking that anytime you lose a first game to an opponent that he always 'must' give you a rematch game - and immediately.
Its apparently that same psychology in operation all the time.
Regarding chess being a sport we touch pieces to move them or we touch a computer mouse to move them online ...
does this mean its a 'physical sport'?
Answer: want to obsess over the semantics of 'sport' and 'physical' ...
have fun but that pursuit will have low 'return on investment'.
Trust me.
Low return.

Honestly, the one thing for me in terms of actual chess is the en passant rule. Without it, players would have more freedom to play closed games. It also seemed very strange of a move when I first learned it, as it runs counter to the rule that pawns only go forward but then cross one diagonal when they take a piece.
To counter some other points made in this forum:
- Castling is pretty crucial to chess because leaving your king in the center leads to your opponent exploiting all kinds of vulnerabilities in various ways, like pinning pieces, attacking unprotected pawns, etc. To perform well, you would have to waste a number of moves for prophylaxis. Castling makes these moves unnecessary, and shifts the focus to the development of your pieces in controlling the center.
- Not being able to castle while the king moves over a space which is attacked is important, because although the idea behind it may be wacky, it makes castling encumberable; as a strategy, one can apply pressure on the other's king by preventing it from castling with whatever file or diagonal is available. If this venture succeeds, they could then find ways to attack the king. (Of course, this assumes that this other player is in such a state as to not castle early on in the game as a developing move.)
For website rules, I'd like chess.com to inherit Lichess' feature of requesting taking back a move. That way, at least in friendly games there's a chance that if you mismove your piece, and the mismove is clear enough, your friend will give you a second chance. It would be a nice feature, since you can't exactly mess up moving a piece in over-the-board chess, and you can when playing online. (It happens to the best of us.)