this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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Source unknown, some sites assign it to Oppressive Silence comics by Ethan Vincent. But that website in the corner is shady

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

I appreciate all of these super in depth responses, but man does it validate my decision to never invest any time into chess lmao.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

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.