Abolição do 'empate' ?

Várias pessoas defendem uma revisão das regras do Xadrez e a respetiva abolição da possibilidade do 'empate' ocorrer.

Uma dessas pessoas é Matt Bishop. Aqui fica a sua teoria e solução proposta.

« Simply put a "stalemate" in chess occurs "when a player, whos turn it is to move, has no legal moves left to make... this is deemed a draw". We "Anti-Stalematers" would like you to consider a few arguements for why the stalemate rule should be abolished. And then we will provide a simple, elegant alternative solution.

First look at why we should abolish stalemate. First of all stalemate used to be a win, until it was changed to be a draw in the 19th century. Before this standardization, the treatment of stalemate varied widely, including being deemed a win for the stalemating player, a half-win for that player, or a loss for that player; not being permitted; and resulting in the stalemated player missing a turn.

Secondly we must consider the contradictory and obscure nature of the current rules:

1. You must move when it is your turn, i.e. you cannot "pass" on your move. Even if it will mean suicide you must move if you can. But: if you cannot move, its a draw! This is a contradiction. If you can move in zugzwang you must move, even if it meansa falling on the sword. But if you can't move (which is the highest level of zugzwang) you get out of jail on a free card with a draw.
   
2. It is illegal to move into check. Even though a king may be surrounded in aan all-out attack, he sometimes can't be killed because he cant legally step into check. This is like a lawyer arguing a silly legal technicalities to get his defendent off the hook, when everyone knows the logical outcome of the court case.
   
3. If you cannot move, you are powerless, without options, restricted, suppressed and dominated. It violates the spirit of the game if this saves you and gets you half a point.
4. The whole plan and point of chess is to put an attack on the king. But at some stage the stalemate rule comes along and says: "great, but don't attack the king too well! Be careful to prance around him when you are totally dominating him, otherwise it could easily end in a draw!"
   
5. Making a stalemate a win would in no way make endgame play any easier. In fact, it would probably make it harder. It's true that K+P vs K would be easier, but K+R+P vs K+R would be tougher. In general this endgame would still be drawn for most positions that are drawn under the current rules, but make a stalemate a win and a fair percentage of K+R+P vs K+R become winnable. The endgame K+B vs K or K+N vs K would now be winnable in some situations, but not in general – everything would depend on how close the opposing king is to the corner.
   
6. Chess is, by nature, already very drawish to begin with. We don't need to give players who have been outplayed cheap tricks to save the game (and produce even more draws).
   
7. Capablanca, Reti, Lasker, Nimzowitsch and many other top players have argued for a change as well. I've taught many people chess – they all laugh at the stalemate rule as illogical. Probably you did too, when you first saw it...
   
8. Rules change all the time in other games (e.g. the offside in soccer). In chess the stalemate rule was changed many times in the past (see below), so why not do it one more time?
   
9. * Some argue that draws by forcing stalemate can be "artistic". Agreed, however, winning by forcing stalemate can also be highly artistic.
   

Solution: The goal of chess should simply be to capture the king! It should be legal to step into check, after which the opponent would capture the king on the next move and win. This simple change would solve the whole stalemate problem and make the chess rules more logically consistent. It is much more logical, elegant and simple to have the one rule, "capture the king and you win", as opposed to the current definition of mate: "when the king can't legally move without moving into check". Which version sounds more in the spirit of the game? »