There's a rare FIDE chess rule that *everyone* gets wrong, and it just came up! Here Eric Rosen (@IM_Rosen) just played the stalemate trap of Rh1+, and then Anna Cramling's (@AnnaCramling) flag falls a split second before she can play Kxh1 and hit the clock. What is the outcome?
The normal answer is that Anna has lost, but the *real* answer is that Kxh1 is *not even a legal move*! Under FIDE rule 5.2b the game is already a draw due to being a dead position, because after Rh1+ there is no legal sequence of moves that leads to a mate.
If you disagree, then show me the legal sequence of moves after Rh1+ that leads to a checkmate. The only "legal" next move is Kxh1, after which point the game is a stalemate. Therefore, there is no such sequence leading to checkmate, so the position is dead, and an instant draw.
Absolutely everyone gets this wrong. I'm sure someone will reply saying I'm wrong, and they're de facto right that a real arbiter would rule this a loss for Anna, but that's just because *everyone* is wrong. Under FIDE rules Anna is not even allowed to retake the rook at all!
In fact, under FIDE rules Anna can simply stand up from the board after Eric plays Rh1+, and she neither needs to nor *may* take any further action. The game is already a draw.
Credit: I first learned this bug in the rules of chess from Tom7's paper "Is this the longest Chess game?", and as near as I can tell absolutely nobody else on the planet properly follows this (buggy) rule, even though it's quite clear.
Also, separately I want to congratulate Anna on playing great against Eric. It was a very frustrating stalemate trap at the end, but she was a great sport about it. (Also, they were playing an informal game, so FIDE rules aren't super relevant, but it's a good example!)
Here's a prototypical example, from Tom7's amazing paper which incidentally points out this bug in the FIDE laws of chess. Here it is not legal for black (who has the move) to play Kxa2, as the game is already over. http://tom7.org/chess/longest....
New newsletter: The relationship between politics and mental health isn't what we thought For decades, studies have found that progressives are more depressed, more anxious, and have lower self-esteem than conservatives. Several papers and book chapters have tried to explain why
One influential theory of psychosis is that it is often connected to experiences of aberrant salience. Due to dopaminergic dysregulation, the brain tags random events as being salient or “newsworthy”, which gradually leads individuals to develop warped models of reality in an
Good thread I think a related issue is that most students are not serious about their research. Most are somewhat achievement-motivated. But they aren't deeply trying to understand anything, and rhat shows in their actions/output