Could we have a way to allow for capturing the king in certain contexts?
I believe this is a more natural way of presenting the game, especially for beginers and children. I have been trying to teach my daughter the basics, but she is always gets hung up with the fact that she can't capture the king, which I told her was the objective. The fact that the game ends with a threat doesn't make sense for her, and it didn't make a lot of sense to me either when I started learnig it.
I imagnine that allowing for capturing the king in the puzzles setting could be presented as a checkbox next to the puzzle "Difficulty level" options, that, if checked, would have the effect of asking for one more move to be played in puzzles that end in check mate, before considering it solved. This means that the computer would have to make a move under check, perhaps hoping to escape if the player allows it, the same way it would if it was a "trapped queen" combination, instead of king.
(As a bonus, allowing for the king to be captured could make for a good fun category of fast games. My guess is that would make for very popular tournaments among the bullet players.)
@kudbany1 You cannot take the king in chess. That's like taking the CPU out of your computer and expecting it to still run.
I agree with the post, it is confusing to beginners, esp. children. Even learning what checkmate is and how pins work takes quite a long time. I'd welcome both ideas: training the king capture, and a variant where king capture is the objective. Capture the King would be played exactly like normal chess for advanced players, but beginners would get punished for disregarding threats to the King. That would enforce the concepts behind checkmate.
Currently, a move that leave the king in check is set as illegal. Implementing this may be as simple as setting it back to legal and leaving virtually everything else untouched.
I remember watching a gothamchess video where he was talking about it. (If someone knows which one it is, please post the link, I can't find it now.) It would be nice to have more people weight in, as I am sure there is interest in this.
An interesting consequence (and an intuitive one for me) is that there will be no more stalemates, as the kings will just be forced to move into check anyway. One less mode of drawing the game.
I advice you to play Antichess.
Yes, stalemate is also hard to explain to beginners. An interesting consequence is that some pawn underpromotion scenarios are nolonger meaningful (e.g. to a bishop because it avoids complete restriction of the kings movement) whereas others remain (like underpromotion to a knight which checks the opponents king, either to achieve a smothered mate, or in a forced checkmate sequence). I think Gotham has mentioned King capture in a couple of his videos.
I understand why @kudbany1 wants that, but I don't know how to handle it. It would be a new variant ... like blitz rules OTB where an impossible move (not necessarily but mostly a king's move into check) would lose the game instantly. But how should it be realized?
But the advice is indeed: If you just want to move the pieces on the board, use the analysis board and say it is antichess. Then there is no obstacle to capturing the king. (The game, however, continues also without kings.)
Why not grant your little girl the experience of touching real pieces on a real board? Then she can try everything - until she finds it ridiculous not to apply the rules all the world uses. But for first steps you can allow king capture, no en passant, no stalemate ...
I've been teaching children how to play chess for over 20 years. And since I'm teaching them chess, I don't teach them to capture the King. Because that's just not chess.
fair enough.
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