Should rules of chess be changed?

Estragon has a great point. I was listening to an interview with Alekhin, and the reporter asked if memory was important. Alekhin said no, that for the most part, memory has nothing to do with being a great chess player.

As far as changing the rules, I'd say no, chess is a work of art in its current form. Even grandmasters say that they are still students to the game! (Accept capablanca who said chess was to easy for him...but what can you expect from one of the most confident, if almost arrogent grandmasters)

precisely. Perfection in a design isn't when you run out of things to add, but when you run out of things to take away.

These are already standard rules, not just tournament rules!  Fred Reinfeld's books from 1950-1960 include them.  He wrote chess books by the dozen, and they were well received.  I have two of them.  One was bought by me, new that is, maybe 10-12 years ago in fact. According to Hoyle includes those two rules back to copies I've seen in the library from late 50s or early 60's.

Derek J.

 Never heard of that one!  You mean instead of side to side?

Stalemate should be a win! I mean, you've already surrounded the enemy and you're just about to finish him off!

Oh yeah, I'll just say my bit too.  The game looks perfected over centuries.  It's historical and continuous.  Considering the lineage and the inheritance invloved, who are we living in 2010 to alter it now?  Would you really want the game that you learned as a kid and that your forefathers played centuries ago changed?  The great men of history played this.  The good, bad, and the powerful.  It's not simply a practical matter fix this, to change this, whatever.   It's messing with history and culture.  From our perspective, Western civilization.   Maybe something more severe in a sense than amending the American Constiution.  We all know that isn't done very often.

Also I agree that there is a distinct difference between changing a little part like pawn movements, as opposed to dropping chess, and moving to a different game altogether.  I feel that that is what has been done, i.e. changing little things over time (but not for a very long time) for constructive purposes.  One is not the other.  Not that it's justified now at all. 

I will remark about stalemate.  If that were to become a win instead of a draw, winning would be too easy and you could get too sloppy and still do it.  I think that's the whole point.  Being the winning conclusion, it's not supposed to be too easy!  And sloppy chess players do not deserve to win, even if they are winning otherwise.  They get to be drawing fools until they straighten out.  That's the way it's supposed to be!

Derek J.

"Considering the lineage and the inheritance invloved, who are we living in 2010 to alter it now?"

Who were they in 1400 to say that the queen should be able to move more than two spaces?

 Castling is when the Rook and the King both haven't moved from their initial positions and there aren't any pieces between them, and then you can move the King two squares towards the Rook and the Rook to the square immediately on the opposite side of the King, right?

Well, using the rules before the patch, that means that if your King has stayed on e1 the whole game, and you've advanced a Pawn to e7, you can then play e8=R, and then after that O-O-O-O-O-O, putting the King on e3 and the new Rook on e2.

More of a royalist and medival society.  A world more of Kings and Queens.  Maybe that gave them the right more so.  Besides, the game was brought in from the eastern world.  It had to be ameded to suit western society in some ways.

D.J.