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Are there any legal chess positions that cannot be arrived at by a legal move from a legal position?
by thfuran 4y ago
Are there any legal chess positions that cannot be arrived at by a legal move from a legal position?
- anonymoushn 4y ago"legal chess position" is probably defined in terms of being able to arrive at it by legal moves from legal positions.
- tromp 4y agoA legal position is any position reachable from the starting position by a valid game of chess, i.e. a sequence of legal moves. Thus there are no such positions. Every legal position can be arrived at by playing a legal move from another legal position. That includes the starting position, since Nf3 Nf6 Ng1 Ng8 cycles back to it.
- mdiesel 4y agoI guess what the question is, is whether there's a chess position where every piece is in a legal position, but could never be achieved in practice. I can think of several, for example if you had all 32 pieces on the board, but pawns were behind each other on the same file.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tromp 4y agoThat's not a legal position, since it cannot be reached in a valid game of chess. What do you mean by a piece being in a legal position? A position involves placement of all pieces, as well as turn to move, castling rights, and en-passent capturabililty.