Author: Louis Fagliano
Date: 23:39:16 11/13/02
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I've got an excellent idea to make chess more interesting. It doesn't involve enlarging the board and adding new pieces. It doesn't involve destroying opening theory as does Fischer Random Chess. It's simple. Change the stalemate drawing rule. A stalemate is a win; just as good as a checkmate. After all, isn't zugzwang considered a particularly elegant way to force a win? And shouldn't a stalemate be considered as an extreme form of zugzwang? When the stalemate drawing rule established it was meant to be as a punishment for inept (or lazy or even greedy) players who were way ahead in material but couldn't find a mate. What they didn't know at the time was that this makes many endgames drawish and later on as the centuries passed and master technique improved many drawn games among equally matched masters began to appear. With a stalemate as a win almost any material advantage at all would be a winning endgame. Almost all king and pawn vs. king endings would be a win. The only exception I can think of is when you have an a or h-pawn and your king is a square ahead of your pawn and is hemmed in on that a or h-file by the enemy king. With many more endgames a forced win for the side with the material advantage it would make the middlegame for both players more perilous and also it would be much harder to play lazily for a safe draw. It would be interesting to see how the Nalimov tablebases would change.
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