the dark knight responds:
What the heel is this all about??
The 3 primary rule sets for chess puzzles
Sort:
hell
It's part of a larger project which got interrupted when I fell ill and my computer crashed. Note there are links to the official documents provided by FIDE and and the WFCC (the organization for problemists) which is loosely tied to FIDE.
The important message to get is that nobody knows which chess rules apply to a random puzzle posted on e.g. chess.com or any chess website. It doesn't ordinarily show up on normal moves such as "Ng1-f3" but in some cases it might. The main focus however is on termination rules for game terminations and automatic/claimed draws and the handling of dead positions.
One misconception is that the troubles are restricted to puzzling - they affect game play is well. I am pretty sure that all top players have recorded illegal tournament games including Magnus Carlsen. AI systems will come to the same conclusion in the coming decades as the rule inconsistencies cannot be attributed to communication problems. It's just design insanity.
I am enlightened
I dom't feel like I learned anything after reading this thread. In fact, a few brain cells died. But cheers to Arisktotle for being a genius.
*don't
.....being my brother must be hard enough already!
...and Kurt Gödel was almost kicked out of the USA because he did not want to sign a declaration that he as a foreigner applying for a green card or US citizenship would respect the American constitution, because he found internel inconsistencies in it..........
internal
The depleted brain cell count in my brain must be causing the confusion I feel after reading your comment about US citizenship and wondering how it relates to chess.
it's all about rules and regulations, so not only in chess it's confusing!
Einstein and Morgenstern of the Institute of advanced study accompanied Gödel to the Trenton dept. to get him to sign, trying to distract him with small talk from the problems he had with the American Constitution
They succeeded; he signed....
Whenever anyone posts a puzzle in one of the puzzle forums it is likely created on the basis of one of 3 chess rule sets. The 3rd one does double duty for the retrograde field and effectively yields a 4th rule set as well. The 2nd one, by its very nature is the one chess.com should abide by but I am not sure that it does:
Note: All The other Codex composition types may be interesting but commonly impossible to manage in chess.com with its FIDE-oriented puzzle interface so we skip them.
What we would all like is when all puzzles play by the same rules but the situation is that they don't. Which places the burden on the puzzle poster to supply additional information for you to know how the puzzles were made when the details of the rules matter!
Table for the ways to get/claim a draw under the various rule sets. What is most remarkable is that The FIDE ONLINE set is identical to the Codex RETRO set for these conditions. Which has interesting consequences. To discuss in a follow-up post.
Note: DP stands for the inclusion of the Dead Position rule. "Draw by agreement" and "stalemate" are uncontroversial and therefore omitted in the table.
.