Thought process of making a new Chess rule

Hi

what is the thought process for people to create the En passant rule? I think, that it was a response for the two-steps on first move for the pawn. Because two steps on the first move allow pawns to bypass capture by enemy pawns.

But, why allow the capturing pawn to capture by landing on an unoccupied square? No other pieces do that, not even in Xiangqi, it is only possible in checkers.

What was their thought process? If they badly wanted the by-passed Pawn to be capturable, why not allow the capturing Pawn to move to its side? That wasn't so difficult was it? Pawns in Xiangqi can move and capture on the side too. Often after an en passant capture, the victorious Pawn lands on the unoccupied square protected by an unmoved Pawn. Logic?

What a great imponderable

Like why is the only player in soccer who uses his hands the goalkeeper? Answering my own question, it's a metaphor for life...you do well what you do only to find a CHEAT stealing your success.

As for en passant....

the answer is obvious: if capturing en-passant worked on the side than the attacker would lose a tempo in the advance of his pawn.

Thus capturing the pawn that moved 2 squares would not be the same thing as capturing the one who moved 1 square, effectively diminishing the advantage of the en-passant.

to keep pawns from making a run for it

The logic is that just as the pawn was rushing to complete its two-square move, it was intercepted on its first square. It's not making itself vulnerable to an unusual capture on the square it was heading for; rather, it's made subject to the very capture it was trying to avoid. And once you've waived your right to intercept it (by not capturing en passant on the next move) you have tacitly agreed that it really did reach the square it wanted - so no-one has to explain why a pawn can sometimes capture sideways, but not at other times.

If you think about it, without en passant the best place for a pawn is start line. And if there is enemy pawn on neighbour file on third line for black and sixth for white, he is in the most useless position. So someone have had to 'smooth' it.

I am guessing that the en-passant rule was created to reduce the possibilities of pawn locks (blocked pawn chain).

En passant is a byproduct of the rule that lets pawns move two spaces forward on their first move.  Pawns coudln't always move two spaces forward, but when they changed this rule en passant was eventually created as well so that pawns coudln't bypass enemy pawns.  That's why you capture as if they only moved 1 space.

There's no real world logic... the king is an old man, the queen is a long distance runner, the bishop is OCD, the knight is drunk... etc etc.  These are silly stories for kids.  The movement rules create a game rich in strategy and tactics, that's the only reason.

Well to be honest I like that pretty much all rules and strategies of chess do reflect the real world. A real war, to be precise. Preparing the troops in attacking position, coordinating different units, conquering territory, etc.

The only rules that are irrealistic, but necessary to enormously increase the strategy of the game are stalemate and zugzwang.

Zugzwang is not a rule.  It's a strategy/tactic.  What it sounds like you had intended to say is that you are against Stalemate and Not being allowed to "Pass", which if you could "Pass", then there would be no stalemate, your only legal move would be "Pass".

I don't think a player should be allowed to pass.  All it does it reverse the results of certain positions, and then add the confusion of what happens if both players pass in succession?  If Black passes on move 24 and Black had no en passant available on move 24, and White passes on move 25, what do you do?  Is it now a draw?  Is it "Two-Fold Repetition"?  I mean, Black, on moves 24 and 25, has the same position, with the same player to move, with the same legal options both times.

Otherwise, all it would do is reverse the results of certain positions in both directions.  It would make Queen vs Bishop pawn on the 7th with the Defending King beside it and the Attacking King out of range and Queen vs Rook pawn on the 7th with the Defending King beside it and the Attacking King out of range a win for the player with the Queen, as after say, 1.Qxc2 (with Black King on a1), Black has 1 legal move, "Pass".  On the flip side, it would make WKd5, WPe4, BKf4, BPe5 a draw, as both sides would repeatedly pass, instead of the way it is today, where whoever is to move loses.  Probably the most classic example of Reciprocal Zugzwang.

So all the movement rules are realistic?

In a real war are all units equally powerful and distinguished only by mobility?

Are wars waged against a key figure not a state or population?

A major part of any real battle are supplies and supply lines.

In chess you can see all the chessmen at all times.

Moral, terrain, disease, politics.  There are a million reasons why chess is nothing like a real war or battle.

Well, OP, you mention the main reason, I would imagine, for the rule yourself: To make it harder for pawns to bypass enemy pawns.

It's not really that hard to answer your next question: in general, people didn't like the idea of pawns moving side-ways, so with the en passant rule they can get the best of both worlds. In other words, I think side ways movements were the very thing they were trying to avoid. I like the lack of flexibility in pawn movement because it forces you to make some big long term decisions about where you place your pawns. And, it's simpler . I like how chess has fairly simple piece movements, aside from the knight, yet can still have immense complexity. Good games are very challenging without having overly complicated rules.

And as others mentioned, in a sequence like e4, dxe3 en passant, the idea is that by taking on e3, it represents the fact that the d4 pawn captured the e pawn on e3 (as if white played e3) before the pawn got to e4. This may seem strange, since you already played e4 before black made his move, but since chess is not a real time game, we have to settle for this way of representing it (as opposed to, say, quickly moving the d4 pawn to e3 before your opponent finishes pushing his pawn to e2-e4 ).

Since by the rules a pawn can't move horizontally, the d4 pawn's only hope is to capture the bypassing e pawn, "before" it gets out of the pawn's diagonal reach. As wafflemaster said, a board game is never a realistic simulation in a strict sense -- rules tend to be an extremely loose representation of reality at best.

Well, I find your explanation reasonable, similar to what Gil-Gandel said earlier too.

However, this line of thinking, thought process, has one flaw, in my opinion. With no offence intended.

1) Treating Chess in a manner of "what ifs", thereby violating the flow of mutual turns. You both are stating a what-if, when the pawn moves to e3 and gets intercepted before it reaches e4. So that means time reverses, the e4 move never happened as the pawn was taken via en passant at e3, going backwards in time, not exactly, but that is implied.

This idea of what-if / implied-time-reversal concept is the heart of a few other chess topics. Mutual turns are a fundamental rule and why there cannot be pass / skip turns. Why the king cannot move over a checked square when castling, then he may be captured en passant (intercepted). Why a checkmate still counts even if the knight defending the escape square would expose his own king to check if he ever moves.
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/pinned-knight-capable-of-check
But that is another story (or two).

Perhaps the pawn moves diagonally instead of sideways to keep up its pace moving forward. If the pawn were to capture sideways, that's slowing down the pawn, which would also be unfair because of how far it traveled on the board. It would be used as a stall tactic still.

That's just my thought.

Allows for opening pieces to move out faster and and w/ more options.

@christeochristeo

I think all of those what if rules make sense. A king should be able to be checkmated even if one of the nearby attacking squares is being attacked be a piece defending is king. Once the leader dies the army goes home, at least in chess.  It actually reinforces the idea of turns. For instance, if we both had handguns, were reasonably close to each other and flipped a coin to decide who shoots first,  I do not think there would be more than one round ( or ply, or half a turn) in this game. Whoever won the coin toss would end the game and the fact that we each theoretically get two turns is of no consequence. In en passant it also makes sense. The pawns are given the liberty to gain tempo and move two squares, so the attacking pawn is, in turn, given the ability to attack the square the pawn would have neccessarily traveled through. Notice both are only given that liberty immediately and conditionally. The pawn cant jump two squares after his first move and the opposing pawn cant en passant after the turn has been completed. It is in fact turn based as the two square leap only completes the ply.  A king cannot move through checkmate because kings do not have the ability to "teleport". There again the king is merely given tempo and not made invisible. As for the passing rule I think it could  be amended. I would like there to be a rule that says either player can pass and then the other player is allowed to pass also. Three consecutive passes would be the same as a resignation. So if you initiate the pass and you pass again you would just being saying, "I resign". Maybe, though it is not popular, they could incorporate that into 960, which I think is a great game since it allows for a larger focus on tactics and creativity. 

As I said, strictly speaking en passant doesn't make sense, since as you said there would involve a backwards time travel. But board games can never perfectly emulate everything -- see wafflemaster's post. We cherry pick the things we want to represent, and ignore all of the inconsistencies we don't care to focus on. When people make metaphors, they use a symbol to prove a point, without focusing on all of its literal implications.

I read a post saying that people altered the rules of chess to allow pawns to move to spaces forward, yet they didnt want play to move so quickly that pawns could escape the wrath of other pawns.

It's likely that, as most people are saying here, that the en passant rule was created to inhibit some of the pawn's mobility; they were allowed to move two spaces forward for speed of play, not to escape.