Single Comment

Ralph,

I would be interested in your reasoning on why repetition should be
forbidden if stalemate is an objective?  Does that also imply that the
50-move rule should be a win? (As you have stipulated for Weakest Chess,
changing it to 100 moves because of the weakness of the pieces.)

Taking these together, it does eliminate all draws, but is there a
necessary connection between stalemate=win and no draws? In Shatranj,
stalemate was a win but draws were possible. Modern chess changed
stalemate to a draw, perhaps with a view to punishing inferior endgame
play--many stalemates occur in positions where the stonger force could
have checkmated with better play.

Hypothetically, the primordial (pre-Chaturanga) chess had capturing the
King as its objective. Then players found the winning by oversight when
the opponent failed to protect his King against threatened capture or
exposed his King to capture wasn't rewarding, so the rules of check were
invented. A player could not expose his King to capture or leave it
exposed to capture, if he had any alternative.  Then the absence of moves
relieving the threat of capture was defined as the objective and the final
capture of the King was omitted--thus checkmate was defined. The absence
of alternatives concept is equally applicable to stalemate, in this case
the absence of moves which don't expose one's King to capture.  So by the
same logic, stalemate is a win--both checkmate and stalemate involve
taking away the opponent's alternatives to allowing his King to be
captured.


[Is there any possible stalemated position where the illegality of
exposing one's King to check is not a factor?]