Things more important than mate in chess

People often think mate is the largest threat in chess, however this is not the case.

There are situations where the only way to prevent a mate is for white to capture one of their own pawns with a pawn. However, the pawn cannot do this -- white would literally rather have their king slaughtered before committing friendly fire.

How does this make any sense? I want to save my king and if I need to do this at the expense of having my army literally kill eacjother, I don't care -- as long as it prevents mate.

However the rules of chess don't reflect this mindset. It's a very interesting choice in the rules -- one which I don't agree with and that I think we should patch. Let me know when this is completed on lichess, thanks

yes, it wouldnt be mate with different arbitrary rules that would allow you to free up the lines and diagonals you need to defend your king.
no, that doesnt mean there are larger threats than mate, the king is still the most important piece in standard chess (and also in said variant for that matter).

what your talking about is using a backwards pawn to capture the friendly pawn diagonally in front of him to free up a horizontal or diagonal for your kings defense. that would be a rule change / variant. it would be quite interesting if it works for all friendly pieces (not sure if white and black are balanced like this, but it would be really fast and interesting and be a great visualisation and mating pattern exercise).

Flagging is better indeed

Well, if we go that way. If the King is in a life-or-death situation, he'll be able to run much faster, maybe even as fast as a Queen. Bishops will do anything to prevent the death of their King, and even jump to a square of a different colour. And no piece will politely wait their turn: they *all* move to prevent mate. The King will think out of the box, and move to i9 to escape mate.

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Chess is not a realistic battle, anyways. The rules evolved to make for interesting games. It is not realistic that each side be represented in essence by one piece, their king, and all can be rightly sacrificed to get at that piece. It is not realistic, that you win, if you mate one move before your opponent could do the same to you. It is not realistic that stalemate not be won. So when you bring in the friendly fire idea, saying with it, mate often wouldn't be mate, make sure it makes for a more interesting game (it might), you need not argue it is about a realistic mind set, chess isn't about that.