Here, I will make two brief comments on matters relating to the game of Chess.
When I was first instructed in the rules of Chess at the age of 10, one thing about them was confusing. Since it was so strongly emphasized that the King cannot be captured, I didn't think there was any problem with moving the King into check!
One modern textbook of Chess today has gone to the other extreme, and flatly stated that the objective of Chess is to capture the opponent's King. I would tend to think that this statement is true, if it is qualified.
Here is how I would explain the objective of Chess:
The move where the King is captured does not actually occur in a chess game, since it would happen two moves (one for each player) after the move that decides the winner. Although this means that the capture of the King is not actually played as a move, it is still effectively the object of the game. However, this has one important qualification. A position in which the next move cannot prevent the King being captured on the move after can be a win, or it can be a draw, depending on whether the position is checkmate or stalemate. For checkmate, the King also has to be in check at the start of the move; that is, if neither the King nor any other piece of the losing player moved on his turn, the King could still be captured on the next move.
In practice, the stalemate rule is intended to make Chess a more demanding game of skill, requiring care to win even by the player who has developed a lead. But the rule can be made easier to remember by thinking of it in symbolic terms. If Chess is a game of war, then when victory is inevitable, if the enemy King is not under the watchful eye of one of your soldiers, perhaps by committing suicide, or by destroying papers, or a symbol of his office, he can still cheat you of your victory.
If we keep firmly in mind that the object is still, in effect, to capture the King, then it is clear that a move into check would lose the game; but such moves are forbidden in order that a game will not be decided by a single lapse.
Another somewhat confusing part of Chess are its special rules, the two-space first move of Pawns and the associated possibility of en passant capture, and castling, and the rule that the King cannot, when castling, move across a square that is attacked.
A famous Grandmaster (one from the Soviet Union who wrote a book on endgames) once forgot that the Rook could move across a square that is attacked during the castling move.
But there is a way to make this particular rule easier to remember as well.
There are only two kinds of chess pieces that move only one step at a time. One is the lowly Pawn, the other the King. Both are allowed to move two steps for their first move, but in different ways.
A pawn can move two steps forwards for its first move. But this is intended only to allow it to move faster, not to skip past a point where it may be captured. Thus, if, when it moved two steps forwards, it could have been captured by an enemy Pawn had it made a regular one-step move, then that Pawn can still capture it by advancing diagonally into the square it would have been in had it made that regular one-step move.
Castling is also always a two-step move for the King, and it must be the King's first move. Thus, the reason why the King cannot move across a threatened square is now obvious: doing so, it would be moving into check. Because it would be liable to the form of en passant capture applicable to Kings; since a King can move in any direction, not just forwards, it can be taken en passant by any piece, not just by a Pawn or another King.
Two problems with Chess have often been noted as interfering with its popularity. There is a third problem that I don't think anything can solve: one can enjoy a game of football without being as strong as a quarterback, just as one can enjoy ballet or gymnastics without being capable of the feats one is watching. But to enjoy watching a game of chess, one has to be able to understand what is going on, what threats and possibilities are present in the chessboard as it stands before the players. The fact that one doesn't have to be quite as smart as the players themselves to enjoy the game, since of course the point of the grandmaster's move is often only obvious after he makes it, as with many discoveries and inventions, or the deductions of Sherlock Holmes, ameliorates this, but only partly.
But the two problems that people keep trying to solve are these:
Among the solutions proposed for these problems are making the board bigger by one or two squares, either just horizontally or in both directions, so that some new pieces can be added, or having the arrangement of pieces on the first row selected at random for each game.
But while such solutions have led to the invention of many interesting variations of Chess, they have not caught on. Replacing Chess with another, although similar, game is just too drastic.
Later on, in the section on Random Variant Chess, I suggest my own variation of Chess to address the first problem. Rather than spoiling the symmetry of the chessboard by arranging the pieces randomly, or expecting one enlarged version of chess to do more than temporarily delay the emergence of a new body of opening theory, I take a modestly enlarged chess board, and by selecting chess pieces from a set of pieces with different powers, I create a family of thousands of variants of Chess, one of which is chosen at random for a pair of games between two players.
Of course, an enlarged chess board, and a set of many possible pieces, involves considerable additional equipment. Perhaps another possiblity would be to randomize Chess slightly. In the early days of Chess, players rolled a die each turn to decide which piece they would be allowed to move. No one would want to return to that. But perhaps players could roll a die, and it would give them the option of making one special move in addition to the regular moves. For example:
1) Pawn may capture by moving one square forwards. 2) Bishop may move one space orthogonally. 3) Knight may move one space diagonally. 4) Rook may move one space diagonally. 5) Queen may make a Knight's move. 6) King may make a Knight's move.
Presumably, the option of making such moves, coming at unpredictable times, would be enough to prevent the use of fixed openings. By advancing the die along the side of the board, one could limit its use to the first eight moves of the game. Rules limiting the use of a bonus move to give check or to escape from mate would also be needed.
Another possibility would be to roll the die once every three moves (two moves for one player, with one move for the other player in between). That would balance out the advance knowledge of what special move is available, and yet reduce the frequency of dice rolls. Again, advancing the die between uses against the edge of the chessboard would limit its use to the first 24 moves, twelve for each player.
In that case, a fair rule for the use of the special move during its lifetime might be:
In the first turn, the special move is novel, and too much would hinge on chance; in the second turn, the move is known, and part of the game; in the third turn, the defender will not have the use of the special move in the next turn to escape from a check given in that turn. But such a rule, doubtless, is just too complicated.
I would like to suggest a solution to the second of these problems which involves, in my opinion, only a very slight change to Chess.
I propose that, in addition to scoring a Chess competition so that, when a game is won, the winner recieves 1 point, and the loser recieves 0 points, and when a game is drawn, each player recieves 1/2 of a point, that a player who can force stalemate should recieve 3/5 of a point, with the other player recieving only 2/5 of a point.
In this way, a result that gives a benefit to one player can be obtained even when play has led to a smaller advantage to one player than can lead to checkmate. Yet, that result is significantly less valuable than that given by checkmate:
difference
Checkmate 1 0 1
Stalemate 0.6 0.4 0.2
Draw 0.5 0.5 0
a checkmate is worth five stalemates by that rule.
Thus, opening theory is not altered at all. The play of the middle game is not changed.
The endgame is altered, but even here, nothing in existing endgame theory becomes obsolete. The large difference in the value of a checkmate and a stalemate means that it remains just about as important as ever for the winning player to ensure a potential checkmate is not reduced to a stalemate.
The change, then, is only that endgame theory is augmented, because now it is enriched with the science of forcing stalemates in positions that before were merely abandoned as drawn.
It is possible that this won't be an unmixed blessing: the ability to put smaller advantages on the scoreboard might make players even more cautious than they already are. This could mean that draws would be still almost as common as they are now, after even less eventful play. Or, even worse, perhaps the advantage that White has by virtue of the first move might allow the player with the white pieces to force stalemate, in game after game. Even without these unfortunate results, Chess is already a grueling game at high levels: this rule might force players to work harder, playing many more moves, in order to win a victory that is only worth 1/5th as much as a real won game, and thus this innovation may be resisted for that reason.
But I think that it is quite likely to have beneficial results in making Chess matches more exciting, rather than the possible negative results that I've noted.
Since the first move gives the player with the white pieces an advantage, and since a change in the game which allows smaller advantages to count might increase the importance of that, I should note a possible rule change to reduce this.
In Chess, since turns alternate, half the time White has moved his pieces one more time than Black, and the other half of the time, White and Black have moved their pieces an equal number of times.
If White were to make one move on his first turn, and for each turn thereafter, each player made two moves, then half the time White would have made one extra move, and the other half Black would have made one extra move. But allowing two moves in each turn would be a major change to Chess, transforming it into something completely different.
But the same result could be obtained if each player made one move per turn, except that the very first move in the game, always made by the player with the white pieces were only half a move. This could be roughly approximated by not allowing White to make a two-step Pawn move as his first move.
This, unlike the change previously proposed, would radically change opening theory, by eliminating many of the openings considered strongest for White. It might make the openings where White begins with a Knight move considerably more popular, as they might be seen as the strongest of those remaining.
Since the Sicilian is almost a refutation of the King's Pawn opening, and other King's Pawn openings are generally held to provide more entertaining tactical fireworks than Queen's Pawn openings, I wouldn't be surprised if some chessplayers harbor a wish that (probably not in general, but perhaps for special events) the Sicilian might be banned, possibly accompanied by a ban on Queen's Pawn openings as well! Thus might the talented Grandmasters of today entertain us with tactical fireworks reminiscent of the fondly-remembered Romantic era of Chess!