Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Closi 1724 days ago
Nope, the rules clearly state if you die you lose.
1 comments

What if both players die at the same time?
That question doesn't make any sense in a turn-based game.
So the rule "whoever dies, loses" only applies to players whose turn it currently is? I thought it was a bit more universal.
Yes, as they can no longer complete the current turn. Traditionally chess is played with time limits, so it makes sense that death causes the current turn, and only the current turn, player to lose.
I propose the alternative that death is instant disqualification regardless of game state, which incentivises murder as a strategy and adds an additional psychological tax but also a necessity to resolve disputes in a way that really makes the Han/Greedo distinction an important one and would make for a fun "spaghetti western involving but not necessarily for intellectuals" flick.

(EDIT: I hope the jest is clear. Murder is bad.)

Which in the context of chess is extra funny, as the game is basically an abstracted battlefield and losses of figures are abstracted deaths.

Even the expression for the end of the game, shah mat = the king is dead (in Persian).

> spaghetti western involving but not necessarily for intellectuals

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...

For practical purposes this is not correct though. It would be trivial for the person whose turn it is to make _any_ legal move to shift the current turn over to their now-deceased opponent and as such win the game.
Making a move does not necessarily shift the turn to your opponent. You can have a position where all of your possible legal moves stalemate your opponent, in which case your move immediately ends that game and is the last move of the game.

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.

Sounds like both players didn't die at the same time then.
This is logical, but the situation when the other player dies needs some solution too. Because the living player finishes their turn and then ... what? There isn't even anyone to have a turn anymore.

So for the sake of completeness, I would expect the rule to cover all deaths at the table.

If the other player dies presumably you can pass the turn to them (and claim victory).
If you see the other player die, you can make literally any legal move and win.
And so begun the feign death meta...
I'd assume the player who could not complete their turn would be the losing player.
Somehow, this thought has me think of a hypothetical Agatha Christie novel.