Once again unreasonably upset about how in chess the winning condition isn't "capture the opponent's king", it's "put the opponent in a position where any of their moves would cause their king to be captured exactly one turn in the future by a hypothetical perfect-playing opponent", which is functionally the same but infinitely more annoying

@socks given chess has a long and storied history, I wouldn't be surprised if the win condition was originally "capture the king" and it changed over time, presumably because if you were in such a situation you'd just resign anyway

@socks and during typing that out I looked it up; original win conditions were in fact "capture the king" or "leave a player with a bare king" (capture everything else)

the persians introduced check/mate to have a warning for a king being captured, and as a result, to prevent games ending suddenly and accidentally

and the bare king rule fell out of vogue somewhere around the 16th century, because it was considered more noble to win by checkmate

Kaito / Katie Sinclaire @KS

@socks (ref: Davidson, Henry; A Short History of Chess)

· Web · 1 · 1