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> Sorry, when I was talking about the stalemate rule, I meant the rule that declares that the game is a draw, if the only move you can make is putting yourself

> Sorry, when I was talking about the stalemate rule, I meant the rule that declares that the game is a draw, if the only move you can make is putting yourself into check. There is a Chess game that does this. It's Chinese Chess (which is just as old as Western Chess, and has the same origin in India). In Chinese Chess, the objective is to capture (or as the Chinese say, "eat") the king. There is no prohibition against putting your King in check. It works just fine, unless the only pieces left are Kings. The main problem is players doing checks forever or chasing pieces around forever: the rule is that if you do that you lose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi Now stalemate by repeated back-and-forth is a different matter. I would favor some variant of Go's Ko rule, which is that you may not make a move if the result would be a board that looked exactly the same as it had in the past.

eru 3y ago
Thanks for bringing up the Chinese chess example! Btw, see https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.04374.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.04374.pdf for an investigation. > Now stalemate by repeated back-and-forth is a different matter. I would favor some variant of Go's Ko rule, which is that you may not make a move if the result would be a board that looked exactly the same as it had in the past. I would favour that rule as well, but keep in mind that even in Go that is a very modern formulation / variation of this rule. Past formulations were about as clunky as chess's stalemate rules, and even left some situation (that were extremely rare in practice) without a satisfactory resolution. Btw, in Go the 'board' isn't the only state the game has: you also count prisoners. After a complicated ko exchange, the board might look the same, but the prisoner count has gone up for both players. I assume the rules probably only care about the difference in prisoner counts (and board state) to determine whether a state has been repeated; not the absolute prisoner count.
- SeanLuke 3y ago
  I don't know about Japanese rules, which are borderline insane. I use the only rational ones: Chinese rules! As far as I know, in Chinese rules, Ko only considers the board configuration.
  - eru 3y ago
    Well, I have the same reaction (though a bit muted) the Western Chess's refusal to capture the king.

eru 3y ago

Thanks for bringing up the Chinese chess example! Btw, see https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.04374.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.04374.pdf for an investigation. > Now stalemate by repeated back-and-forth is a different matter. I would favor some variant of Go's Ko rule, which is that you may not make a move if the result would be a board that looked exactly the same as it had in the past. I would favour that rule as well, but keep in mind that even in Go that is a very modern formulation / variation of this rule. Past formulations were about as clunky as chess's stalemate rules, and even left some situation (that were extremely rare in practice) without a satisfactory resolution. Btw, in Go the 'board' isn't the only state the game has: you also count prisoners. After a complicated ko exchange, the board might look the same, but the prisoner count has gone up for both players. I assume the rules probably only care about the difference in prisoner counts (and board state) to determine whether a state has been repeated; not the absolute prisoner count.

SeanLuke 3y ago
I don't know about Japanese rules, which are borderline insane. I use the only rational ones: Chinese rules! As far as I know, in Chinese rules, Ko only considers the board configuration.
- eru 3y ago
  Well, I have the same reaction (though a bit muted) the Western Chess's refusal to capture the king.