If FIDE were to simplify the rules of chess to “capture the king” and do away with check, (except regarding castling), and stalemate what major impact would that have on high level play:
2 obvious ones are that a K+P v K is now always a win if the K can protect the P and K+2N v K is now a win. Games potentially leading to those endgames will be evaluated differently.
Any other major impacts this would have?
Eric Rosen would lose a bunch of his YouTube content.
If you extend the “no check” change to the castling rules, then opening play would change as well. If the king is allowed to castle through check, it’s harder for an attacker to trap the king in the centre.
But the main change would be to the evaluation of basic endgames as you say. Endgame defending depends on stalemate ideas in a lot of cases. Bishop+Rook pawn would be a win, Queen vs. Rook/Bishop pawn would be a win, etc. And we’d lose those “rambling rook” positions where the defender tries to get rid of their piece to stalemate themselves.
I’ve thought for a while that the stalemate rule doesn’t make much sense - go to chessbeginners on Reddit and see how many posts are from people confused about why their game was declared a draw. People’s reaction when learning about the rule is often that it doesn’t seem fair. But it does provide for some interesting gameplay effects.
Can you show your work on either of these? It seems to me that K+P vs. K is already a win, if the king can protect the pawn (the only stalemate condition is weak king on the back rank in front of pawn, with strong king right behind the pawn, and that seems easy enough to avoid). And as I understand it, KNN vs. K is a draw, not because of stalemate, but simply because there’s no way to force the weak king into a mate position… Unless it is possible to force him into a stale position?
8/1k6/7K/6r1/8/8/1P6/8
In this position the King has to take the rook but can’t prevent black from blockading the pawn and king, eventually white will have to give up the pawn, stop pushing or stalemate black.
8/7p/2k5/8/8/3NN3/3K4/8
Here’s a position where if you let the highest level chess.com computer play itself it will force black’s king into a stale position, all the while babysitting black’s pawn, stopping it from queening, it would be much easier from a general position without worrying about the pawn.
Just a novice here, but how could you “do away with” check? If my pieces can capture your king on the next move, and you do nothing to prevent it, I’ll capture your king on the next move and win.
Same with stalemate. If my position is such that you can’t move without putting yourself in check, should I just win (instead of the game being declared a draw)?
The rule would eliminate the vast majority of stalemates (I am assuming that the OP means that the suicide move of moving your king into check is not only permitted but required if it is the only move available). Most stalemates would turn into wins for the person who initiated the stalemate. You could still have repeating position stalemates as well as maybe an oddball situation here and there.
Got it – thanks!
That’s how I was interpreting the question as well.
Just for clarity, stalemate refers only to the situation where it’s a player’s turn, but they have no legal moves and their king is not in check. There are other types of draws, like threefold repetition, but they’re not stalemates.
There are many positions where K+P vs. K is a draw, because the defending king can oppose the attacking king’s advance. In those positions the defender can force either the stalemate or the capture of the pawn.
The KNN vs. K case is a draw because of stalemate as well. The defending king can be forced into a corner, but there’s no time to set up the final checkmating position because the king is stalemated. Many similar KNN vs. KP positions are wins, because the defender’s pawn gives the attacker time to checkmate while that pawn wastes moves.
Really, it does seem odd that stalemate is considered a draw: In any stalemated position, one side is clearly superior to the other. And in fact, in most games, not having any legal move available to make is considered a loss for the side that can’t move.
It’s also worth noting that almost all variants on chess, of necessity, remove the rule against moving into check (it’s just highly inadvisable), and just have the game end with the king being captured like any other piece. In variants with more than two players, it’s possible that another player will (directly or indirectly) bail you out. In duck chess (is that still a thing?), you can move into check and then block with the duck. Even in variants as trivially different as speed chess, it’s possible to blunder into check, and for your opponent to not notice it quick enough to do anything about it.