Source unknown, some sites assign it to Oppressive Silence comics by Ethan Vincent. But that website in the corner is shady
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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I don't get it
Queen moves into a space that stops king from moving as you cannot move into a check. It's a forced draw.
What’s the benefit to the game of this being a draw instead of an obvious loss to white?
Because not all positions are winnable and chess is more about records rather than 1 win or loss. For example 1 person beating another person 1 time is meaningless. 10-3-2 record means something else entirely.
In theory black could play poorly and give the queen away by placing it next to the white king, then if the white king takes the black queen it would be a draw. Why would black do such a thing? Well playing poorly also means stalemating your opponent in an obviously winning position, which also happened here.
You can argue it's an "obvious win", just like I could argue if I'm a piece up it's an "obvious win" for me. But just because it's obvious doesn't mean the result is guaranteed to happen.
Also I guarantee you not everyone can actually checkmate a king with just a queen and king. So in fact it's not so obvious for a super beginner.
As for the benefits of the actual mechanism itself, in some positions you can actually force a draw or stalemate where you'd either otherwise be losing, or you are unclear of your advantage. For example in one of my games I was chasing the King around with my Rook where if the king took my rook, it would be stalemate, and if they didn't take my rook I would keep checking the king (while making sure the distance between my rook and their king is 0).
I appreciate all of these super in depth responses, but man does it validate my decision to never invest any time into chess lmao.
Never liked that rule. The king should be a capturable piece and be allowed to step into checks. It might make the game harder at a beginner level but it gets rid of the anticlimactic stalemates. It won't get rid of draws because the repetition rule still applies.
In Chinese variant of chess, the king (general) can be forced to step into check thus resulting in losing the game. But most games just stop there when the king has no "legal move" and yield.
"You didn't win correctly." - Chess (The original Dark Souls-themed tactical grid-based roguelike war game)
They'll fix it in chess 2.
Na the last patch to chess was 400 years ago. I don't think it is being actively developed anymore.
Or in one of the paid dlcs.
They didn’t.
David Sirlin actually made chess 2 years ago, you can go try out its different armies
Stalemate rules mean that a player in a heavily disadvantaged position still has the opportunity to play for a draw, whether that comes from their own clever play or a mistake from their opponent (what happened in the comic).
I don't know anything about chess but I imagine one benefit would be to give the losing player one last opportunity to avoid a loss by being strategic and give the winning player the need to still think about their moves instead of just randomly moving around since they know they will win otherwise.
In a competitive setting, it would mean that both players get 0.5 points instead of white getting 0 and black getting 1 points.
Depends.
If the goal is to just play a game with a clear winner and loser, there's no benefit at all.
But that isn't what chess is. It's more like a strategy game where there are multiple outcomes that would reflect degrees of skill and thinking.
If you're already behind, but you can pull off a stalemate, that's hard. In some ways, it's harder than winning in the first place. It means that you and the other player are well matched. I've heard serious players rattle on about difficult draws the way football (both types) fans will talk about decisive victories of their favorite team. They'll pick the moves apart and use those moves and tactics in their own games.
I was never a serious chess player at all. I simply don't have the willingness to study it the way you have to to be really good at it. It felt too derivative for my preferences. But I can still remember more of my close games and draws than I can my wins because it took more of the kind of gameplay I enjoy, where you're kinda winging it and calculating based on your own way of thinking instead of relying on a body of research and theory.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with that at all. The folks that play high level chess are amazing, and I fully respect the work they put into grokking chess at that level. I'm just saying that isn't fun for me, and I play board games of any type for fun and companionship, not personal improvement or a sense of competitiveness.
Which, going back, is why I can recall my draws better than my wins or losses. They were me having fun and managing to hang with smarter, better players by dint of sinking into the play of it.
But when one of those players pulls off a draw from disadvantage? That's fucking art, it's mastery of a complicated but finite set of possibilities.
Thanks for the word grokking.
You and Elon can compare notes about how much you love the idea.
?
https://x.ai/
"Grok" way predates xitter and predates elon himself by a decade. It was coined by Heinlein in 'Stranger in a Strange Land' and means 'to understand fully'.
Just because some ass-hat uses a word doesn't immediately give it a negative connotation.
The boringly misogynistic screed about how you're stupid if you aren't an anarcho-capitalist into polyamory that became popular among nerdy misogynists because it was ahead of the curve on 70's swinger culture?
Yes, I've read it, and I'm aware, it's a common pairing with his quasi-fascist work in Starship Troopers.
It spent a hundred pages pondering the concept of words in an alien language that don't necessarily translate to English!
Wow!
Big think!
Don't let the nerdy ancap incels have it!
Fair enough. I haven't read it, but I knew that the term is not new and figured out where it originated. My understanding of it was a neutral term that became slang.
I'm tired of the right-wing taking ownership of terms/icons/etc and wanted to push back.
In the service of not bringing politics where it isn't wanted, I'll stop there.
I will continue to grok things, despite Heinlein's positions or elon's chatbot.
Fair enough fair enough, but the point of grok is that you can't really grok grok as a human that grew up on Earth.
Mahmoud:
"'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed—to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us as color means to a blind man."
It forces players to focus on the game no matter how much of an advantage they have.
This + no other piece is allowed to move
Huh? I thought having no valid moves that wouldn't lead to the king's death was a loss. How DO you lose then?
That would be the case if the king was currently in check, but as he's currently on a safe space then it's stalemate
Have to put him in check, while also preventing him from moving into another spot that could also put him into check.
This would likely have been a stalemate anyway.
Edit: the bishop's existence didn't even register to me when I made this comment. More pieces are better, and yes, King and Queen are sufficient to mate. However, the fewer the pieces you have, the lower your chances of success.
King and queen is fully sufficient to checkmate
I said likely. I know it's sufficient, but it's not inevitable.
It is inevitable, there's no maybe about it
It's possible to stalemate, too.
Not if the player with the queen has any idea at all what they're doing. By your logic, it's also possible to lose your queen by making a stupid move.
Correct
It's been a long time since I played, but king+queen+bishop should be pretty achievable?
It is, king and queen is all you need
How come? I'm not very good at chess personally but I was under the impression that queen-bishop-king was generally sufficient to force a mate.
Somehow I didn't even register the existence of the bishop. It's possible to mate with just king and queen, but more pieces the better.
How is it a draw is both black bishop and king are still playing? Queen moves back, white king moves anywhere it wants and for good sake do a proper check mate
An I over analysing?
How can the queen move back when it's the white king's turn and he can't move
Under analyzing.
It's black move for the queen, the next turn is white and the king is blocked but not in check
Wrong move, stalemate (white has no legal moves). White gets off with a draw.