“Death” one of 5 ways to lose at Chess, according to PGN standard

[ex3xu]

"death": losing player called to greater things, one hopes.

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...

[lenzm]

I don't think that's too surprising, I doubt you can play chess at a high level with early stages of Alzheimer's.

[hirundo]

  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."

If checkmate is the death of the Shah, death is a common ending. If you also consider the other pieces it's usually a massacre.

[tropdrop]

And "shahmaty" is what chess is called in Russian – шахматы. The expression for check and mate is shah i mat (шах и мат) also, but "shah" (шах) in Russian sounds almost exactly like the word for a step (шаг) – it sounds a bit like saying here is my final step, my final move.

Growing up, I thought that's where the expression came from, and had no clue it was from Arabic! Thanks for this.

[wellthisisgreat]

So it does mean that the chess assumes that the king is never “killed”? It always stood out to me as, what I assumed to be medieval code of conduct that required not killing kings (killing queens is ok)

[phonebucket]

This occurred in a game of mine.

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.

[Aulig]

Im not familiar with chess - why do some games last that long? Or was it multiple games?

[chaorace]

  "death": losing player called to greater things, one hopes.

It's not often that a standard written by committee leads me to ruminate on the nature of life.

[vardump]

Please never show these rules to a general AI and ask it to win a chess match...

[amelius]

Unless you implement Asimov's first law of robotics.

[catlifeonmars]

As an aside, would it be ethical to restrict an AGI to a single purpose? It sort of reminds me of Rick’s butter robot from Rick and Morty

[tzs]

> "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).

[lom]

Does this imply killing the opponent is a viable strategy in chess?

[Verdex]

Not quite. There is also a "rules infraction" where failure to adhere to the laws of chess OR the event regulations can cause you to lose.

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.

[MerelyMortal]

Technically yes, but it is likely not a lawful defense to murder.

[stardenburden]

Death' Gambit

You sacricifive your next dozen or so free years for the victory.

[contravariant]

Or does it mean you could win a game of chess against Death itself on a technicality?

[franky47]

Deep Blue vs Kasparov could have taken a very different turn.

[jarofgreen]

Pyric victory - technically you won but the resources you have to sacrifice (your imminent loss of freedom while in prison) make it not worth while.

[Natsu]

You'd assume the other person would have it decided against them for a rules infraction first.

[icelancer]

Feel like you'd lose by "rules infraction"

[shironandon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing

[thesuperbigfrog]

"called to greater things, one hopes"

The player did not lose, they were recruited to St. Peter's Celestial Chess team.

[anderskaseorg]

The rules of chess are defined by the FIDE Handbook (https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/E012018), not the PGN standard. Although the FIDE Handbook makes no explicit provision for the death of the player, it does say:

“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.

[Ekaros]

Makes perfect sense. You can't win king vs king+pawn ever. As such even if opponent died in such situation you don't get win.

[Tommah]

Years ago, I read a tongue-in-cheek list of tips on how to win at chess. One of them said, "Never resign. There's always a chance that your opponent will drop dead before he can checkmate you."

[manquer]

In somewhat serious play and definitely professional play it would be considered bad manners to not resign a obviously lost position, and also kind of insulting to the opponent in not accepting he can win such a obvious position and making them play it over the board.

[spicybright]

I mean hey, some rules are written in blood.

[ummonk]

You'd think it would be subsumed under "emergency"

[rmetzler]

Chess is played over (snail) mail a lot, so it’s possible the player dies a natural death and it’s not “an emergency”. I guess an emergency is more like you leave the board in a hurry.

[leblancfg]

I imagine if this was ever used, it would be mostly for correspondence games, which can last up to many years.

[vadfa]

It's funny to think that someone put all of those values in an array of some computer code somewhere.

[manquer]

This makes me think can I continue to play after I die? Or Do I automatically forfeit the game because I died ?

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 ?

[shreddit]

Is “unterminated” the default value? or can a game end with the value unterminated?

[CrazyStat]

You can have a pgn for a game which is still in progress (indeed, this is common these days with major tournaments being livestreamed). "Unterminated" covers this case.

[usrusr]

Somehow I would have hoped that the rules for death during a game of chess would be a deep dive into the succession laws of when- and wherever those rules were established.

[animal531]

Talking of death, I wonder how many chess pieces have "died" in all the games that have every been played?

[xondono]

Now we will start to see tournaments on certain countries with all GMs over 80y…

[SergeAx]

Because chess can be played asynchronously, by snail mail for example.

[rawling]

Or indeed draw, presumably.

[Closi]

Nope, the rules clearly state if you die you lose.

[nkrisc]

And to think, I could have won all those matches I lost simply by killing my opponent.

[ashtonkem]

Well, one of them at least. Getting another match is kind of tricky with that strategy.

[fallingknife]

No that would be under "rules infraction"

[rex_lupi]

Tennison gambit ICBM variation or Albin countergambit nuclear powered submarine variation? https://youtu.be/E2xNlzsnPCQ