479
Chess (lemmy.world)

Source unknown, some sites assign it to Oppressive Silence comics by Ethan Vincent. But that website in the corner is shady

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Eiri@lemmy.ca 71 points 4 months ago
[-] OwlPaste@lemmy.world 184 points 4 months ago

Queen moves into a space that stops king from moving as you cannot move into a check. It's a forced draw.

[-] Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 48 points 4 months ago

What’s the benefit to the game of this being a draw instead of an obvious loss to white?

[-] Evolith@lemmy.world 149 points 4 months ago

"You didn't win correctly." - Chess (The original Dark Souls-themed tactical grid-based roguelike war game)

[-] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 53 points 4 months ago

They'll fix it in chess 2.

[-] ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago

Or in one of the paid dlcs.

[-] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 8 points 4 months ago

Na the last patch to chess was 400 years ago. I don't think it is being actively developed anymore.

[-] KuroiKaze@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

David Sirlin actually made chess 2 years ago, you can go try out its different armies

[-] gloog@fedia.io 73 points 4 months ago

Stalemate rules mean that a player in a heavily disadvantaged position still has the opportunity to play for a draw, whether that comes from their own clever play or a mistake from their opponent (what happened in the comic).

[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 4 months ago

It forces players to focus on the game no matter how much of an advantage they have.

[-] Vigge93@lemmy.world 19 points 4 months ago

In a competitive setting, it would mean that both players get 0.5 points instead of white getting 0 and black getting 1 points.

[-] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 15 points 4 months ago

I don't know anything about chess but I imagine one benefit would be to give the losing player one last opportunity to avoid a loss by being strategic and give the winning player the need to still think about their moves instead of just randomly moving around since they know they will win otherwise.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Gladaed@feddit.org 16 points 4 months ago

This + no other piece is allowed to move

[-] Eiri@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 months ago

Huh? I thought having no valid moves that wouldn't lead to the king's death was a loss. How DO you lose then?

[-] smeg@feddit.uk 20 points 4 months ago

That would be the case if the king was currently in check, but as he's currently on a safe space then it's stalemate

[-] PunnyName@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Have to put him in check, while also preventing him from moving into another spot that could also put him into check.

This would likely have been a stalemate anyway.

Edit: the bishop's existence didn't even register to me when I made this comment. More pieces are better, and yes, King and Queen are sufficient to mate. However, the fewer the pieces you have, the lower your chances of success.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 11 points 4 months ago

King and queen is fully sufficient to checkmate

[-] PunnyName@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

I said likely. I know it's sufficient, but it's not inevitable.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

It is inevitable, there's no maybe about it

[-] PunnyName@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

It's possible to stalemate, too.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

Not if the player with the queen has any idea at all what they're doing. By your logic, it's also possible to lose your queen by making a stupid move.

[-] SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nz 8 points 4 months ago

It's been a long time since I played, but king+queen+bishop should be pretty achievable?

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 months ago

It is, king and queen is all you need

[-] gnutrino@programming.dev 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This would likely have been a stalemate anyway.

How come? I'm not very good at chess personally but I was under the impression that queen-bishop-king was generally sufficient to force a mate.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 12 points 4 months ago

Wrong move, stalemate (white has no legal moves). White gets off with a draw.

[-] fargeol@lemmy.world 64 points 4 months ago
[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 42 points 4 months ago
[-] MissingInteger@lemm.ee 16 points 4 months ago

This comic is indeed by oppressive silence comics by Ethan Vincent.
He seems to have disappeared from the internet in mid-2018. This comic titled draw seems to have been his second to last published comic.

Archived link to his website.
xcancel link to his twitter.

[-] aleq@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

Is this some special rule? Looks like check mate to me?

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 42 points 4 months ago

It's a stalemate

[-] PDFuego@lemmy.world 21 points 4 months ago

It's only checkmate if he's currently in check and has no legal moves afaik.

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 5 points 4 months ago

They queen can't take the king from that position, so he's not in check, so it's not check mate.

[-] TomViolence@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

I've never understood why stalemate is draw.

[-] PunnyName@lemmy.world 26 points 4 months ago

Not in check = not in danger

[-] TomViolence@lemm.ee 6 points 4 months ago

I understand the reasoning, not the legitimacy.

[-] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The legitimacy was described above. The game is designed so that you can’t stop focusing even when you’re in a winning position. Players over the centuries have admired cleverness in the face of overwhelming odds. That’s what it means to turn a losing position into a draw.

For real life war analogies, think of the king escaping through a secret tunnel while his castle is under siege and all his soldiers dying.

[-] TomViolence@lemm.ee 1 points 4 months ago

The extra challenge stalemate adds can be interesting, I don't deny it.

It's just that if a player is in a position where they can't do anything beside suiciding their king, they're obviously not winning, and it seems a little bit unfair for the other player to consider the situation is equal and that noone can be designated as the winner.

[-] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

I’m not sure why it should be considered unfair for a player with a winning position to allow his opponent to escape with a draw by stalemate due to the winning player’s carelessness.

The position where you have a king, queen, and bishop versus a king is totally winning and all it takes is patience and careful moves to win. The only way the lone king is getting a stalemate is due to carelessness on the part of his opponent.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] KombatWombat@lemmy.world 18 points 4 months ago

Chess is an old game, and stalemate wasn't always considered a draw. At other times, creating a stalemate may have been considered a win or loss or partial win, or it may have been illegal altogether. But the modern draw makes sense if you keep in mind a few things. First, the victory condition is putting the opponent's king in checkmate (or accepting their concession). Second, exposing your king to an attack during your move is not just a blunder, it is actually an illegal move, to the point that you can't even do it as a pass through while castling. So stalemate is a unique outcome where neither player achieves their victory condition, yet the game cannot continue, since the player who must move next has no legal moves available.

In a practical sense, stalemate offers a means of giving a player in an inferior position a means of escaping a loss by punishing the dominant player for not being able to capitalize on their lead. It helps prevent someone from being able to brute force a win by making safe moves that do little to actually progress the game, like advancing all their pawns until the game is trivial. It's much less interesting to have the end game strategy be more about not losing one's lead rather than extending it.

So a win requires being more than slightly ahead of an opponent. It's worth pointing out that most high level chess games end in a draw where neither player has a sufficient lead to force a checkmate. There are other rules in modern chess that also force a draw to make sure the game is more about getting a win than just avoiding a loss. Otherwise there would be plenty of ways someone could stall forever to try to get their opponent to concede, and that's not very interesting.

[-] 9bananas@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

because there are situations where you do have moves left, but the end in a repeating pattern; the more "classic" stalemate condition.

there's just no "special" case for when you have no legal moves, thus it defaults to stalemate

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
479 points (98.6% liked)

Comic Strips

17292 readers
833 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS