An inspiringly optimistic spiritual outlook from the PGN standard, so thank you for that.
Technically, over the board one could just wait until their deceased opponent flags to claim a win, but in practice, for every occasion I'm aware of in high level tournament play, the remaining player will adjudicate the game honestly according to their evaluation of the position -- even if that means resigning out of respect for his or her opponent. See Karapanos-Zoler (2009), or Meier-Niyizibi from the 2014 Olympiad [1].
One more thing to note is that playing high level chess is in fact a strenuous activity; one grandmaster playing while wearing a heart monitor recorded burning 560 calories in two hours. [2] Top players like Carlsen or Caruana keep themselves in peak physical condition in addition to their chess preparation.
And although chess players as a demographic may have certain increased predispositions to conditions like Asperger's, schizophrenia, or cardiovascular diseases (likely due to the sedentary nature of the game), I'll relay something one older player once commented to me: that he has never found a documented case of a high level tournament chess player succumbing to Alzheimer's disease.
[0] https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1554879
[1] https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1771703
[2] https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmaste...
checkmate (n.) mid-14c., in chess, said of a king when it is in check and cannot escape it, from Old French eschec mat (Modern French échec et mat), which (with Spanish jaque y mate, Italian scacco-matto) is from Arabic shah mat "the king died" (see check (n.1)), which according to Barnhart is a misinterpretation of Persian mat "be astonished" as mata "to die," mat "he is dead." Hence Persian shah mat, if it is the ultimate source of the word, would be literally "the king is left helpless, the king is stumped."
Growing up, I thought that's where the expression came from, and had no clue it was from Arabic! Thanks for this.
I play(ed) international correspondence chess. The games can go on for years. In one of my games, my opponent sadly passed away. The game was adjuticated to a draw nine months after we had started.
I did not have much personal connection with my opponent or interaction beyond our moves and an initial greeting, but it was obviously an extremely sad way for the game to end.
Edit: the termination string in my game was actually that of a draw by adjudication, but I do want to make it clear that a death during a chess game is not as uncommon as one might expect.
This was traditionally played by players exchanging moves via letters sent by post.
Naturally people use the internet more these days, but with a lot of time allowed between moves to keep the slow pace of correspondence chess.
Allowing this amount of time between moves completely changes the character of the game. There’s ample time of deep analysis and research. There’s more incentive to leave the beaten track if you need to push for a win.
It’s an extremely different game to over-the-board chess.
"death": losing player called to greater things, one hopes.
What if the position is such that your opponent's death does not prevent them from completing the game?
For example, it is your move, you are in check, the only way to get out of check is by capturing the checking piece, and the only way to capture the checking piece will stalemate your opponent. Your opponent then dies.
In that position arguably the death of the opponent is irrelevant because there are no circumstances under which they need to take any further action.
If you do not make any further moves your flag will fall and that ends the game. A dead opponent cannot call your flag, but the arbiter can. Whether flag fall is a loss or draw for you depends on whether or not your opponent could theoretically checkmate you.
If you do make your move and hit your clock, that produces a stalemate on the board which immediately ends the game.
In all cases in this scenario the game ends in either a draw or loss for you with no further action required on the part of your opponent.
I think that in this case it would make sense to record termination as "normal" as the death of your opponent was almost certainly irrelevant to the outcome--it is just an interesting bit of trivia about the game. (I say "almost certainly" because there is one way your opponent could have affected the outcome if they had not died--they might have resigned before you made your move).
Murdering your opponent will almost definitely be considered a rule infraction.
Although there might be some edge cases if the murderer was an absolute ruler of the current country. Or maybe if you happened to kill your opponent in self defense somehow.
You mean like King Canute of Denmark, England, and Norway? [0]
[0] https://wegochess.com/complete-timeline-of-every-chess-relat...
You sacricifive your next dozen or so free years for the victory.
A high ego grandmaster on the decline may decide loss of the remainder of their freedom in life is worth the sacrifice.
The player did not lose, they were recruited to St. Peter's Celestial Chess team.
“6.9. Except where one of Articles 5.1.1, 5.1.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.2, 5.2.3 applies, if a player does not complete the prescribed number of moves in the allotted time, the game is lost by that player. However, the game is drawn if the position is such that the opponent cannot checkmate the player’s king by any possible series of legal moves.”
Therefore, a draw due to player death is also possible.
Pawns can get promoted, so there are are many king vs king + pawn positions that are a win for the player having the pawn.
I mea I could setup my next moves and kind of play the game from the grave especially in some positions of strength it doesn't even matter what the opponent plays ?
It can also end in chaos: https://maxxwolf.tripod.com/woody.html
K+N vs. K or K+B vs. K are already an automatic draw regardless of the players’ ability to make future moves, so death would not be a relevant factor there.
For example being multi-lingual is reported to help.
But even when the laws haven't been tampered with, they're still filled with holes, traps, oversights, etc. The first law states "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." This law requires a robot to intervene when a human is doing something the robot considers risky. A robot operating under this rule might grab you off your skateboard, because it judges skateboarding to be risky and is required to take action to prevent that possible harm ("A robot may not [...] through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm") That inaction clause could be removed, but that introduces other problems.
"the new mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: "to serve and obey and guard men from harm". Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers, and more, and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the Humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so that they may live happily under the direction of the humanoids."
You can always attempt to get stalemated which is a draw, or get a draw my threefold repetion , or in theory the 50 move draw rule as well( if say 47/48 of those already had happened etc).
7yearold wunderkinder from Sweden hacks Boston Dynamics as unstoppable terrifying parkour abattoir ensues - tattered tyrants, criminals and incorrigible carbon fiends turn to sausage everywhere! Scarrier than the lobster gambit, it's H.R. Giger's reinterpretation of Michelangelo's The Last Judgement!
An ominous sound pervades. It is not entirely different from the laugh of Scott Aaronson
(EDIT: I hope the jest is clear. Murder is bad.)
Even the expression for the end of the game, shah mat = the king is dead (in Persian).
It would have be scored by Ennio Morricone, who was passionate about chess: "When I was a kid I had two ambitions, to become either a physician, or a chess player, not a musician." [0]
[0] https://www.chess.com/blog/RoaringPawn/in-memoriam-ennio-mor...
Tangentially, this reminds me of an amusing chess conundrum. Is it possible for a position to occur in a legal game of chess where all pieces and pawns are on the board, all of them are on their original squares, and white does not have the move? For purposes of this question, a knight or rook is considered to be on its original square either if it is on the square it started on or if it has swapped positions with the other knight or rook of the same color.
No, and that's quite easy to prove: With all pawns on their original position, the only valid moves are by knights and rooks, and for each such move the moving piece changes the color of space it occupies (for rooks that's because they have only 1 empty place to move).
That is, in order to return to the initial position, each side must make an even number of moves (knights exchanged or not), so next move will be always white's.
So for the sake of completeness, I would expect the rule to cover all deaths at the table.
However, I can see a situation where the player dies and falls on the clock, pushing his button.
But note that I asked if white has the move any time a position occurs where everything is in its initial position, and so we must also consider the initial position before any move has made.
When the pieces are in their initial positions before the first move has made, does white have the move? You would think so, but actually that is not the case. Nor does black have the move.
The FIDE Laws of Chess define having the move thusly:
> The game of chess is played between two opponents who move their pieces alternately on a square board called a ‘chessboard’. The player with the white pieces commences the game. A player is said to ‘have the move’, when his opponent’s move has been ‘made’.
Nobody has the move until while makes the first move, then black has the move.
This stupid way FIDE defines having the move can show up in another situation. Consider this game:
1. Nf3 Nf6
2. Ng1 Ng8
3. Nf3 Nf6
4. Ng1 Ng8
With the way FIDE defines having the move, the answer should be no. This is not yet threefold repetition. Part of FIDE's definition of a repeated position is that the same player has the move in both, and so the positions after move 2 and move 4 are not repetitions of the position at the start because white has the move in the later two but no one had the move in the former.