Wednesday 14 September 2022

Theory v Practice

 The new version of the FIDE Laws of Chess are to be published soon, and will go into effect on the 1st January 2023. As a member of the FIDE Rules Commission, I have been involved in a bit of proofreading, hopefully to eliminate any glaring errors in both language and meaning.

This stands in stark contrast to my experiences earlier in the day. Visiting one of the Canberra schools i coach at, I had a number of interesting rules explained to me by 5 and 6 year old chess players. The main thing they had in common was that the 'rules' allowed my opponents to escape from fairly dicey positions. One example was having played Qh4+ (as Black) to attack the White king on e1, I was told that my queen could be captured by h2-h4, as that's how pawns move. When I tried to explain the correct rule I was told 'No, this is the real rule'


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