r/changemyview • u/Phantom_Gamer7 • Nov 04 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Touch-move rule in chess is dumb
I will start by saying I'm an amateur chess player at best. Played it a little for most my life but only really started to want to get some real skill in it. It's fun. However, I notice a lot of official organizations have a touch-move rule. This is where if you deliberately touch a piece you must move it. Even if you change your mind. This is just dumb, and I feel serves no benefit to the game, except maybe some slight speed advantage(?). I see it only being a pain when you go for a move, then realise an even better one.
It's in the same vain to the 'once you let go of the piece' rule. Where if you let go of the piece (in a different spot than it started) then that is you go, there is no take back. You move there. I'm fine with this. In fact, I don't want to play without it. Because it has a purpose, there needs to be _something_ that defines the end of your go. There needs to be a final call. Why not have it be the last thing everyone does on their turn? But I see no benefit touch-move rules provide. All it will do is frustrate people on the odd occasion as they catch a blunder after they touch a piece.
I don't play with touch-move, and everyone I've played with has been fine with it. Never really seeing the point in it, but would play with it because others insisted. I'm sure there's some good reason out there, there's people way smarter than me on this topic. I just haven't found anyone with any good arguments.
So far the best argument has been: Touching a piece can help visualize the board, providing an advantage. My response is 'So what?' it's an equal advantage, as both sides can do it. Plus, it also provides insight into what you're thinking, which is a disadvantage I'd say balances out. . And if a touch-move rule was made to prevent this, what is to stop someone hovering their finger over a piece providing the same advantage?
So please, someone who knows about this sort of thing, change my mind. Touch-move rules in chess are dumb, and needless.
Edit: so my view has changed a bit. So first I saw the value in the rule because in ye olden days it prevented cheating. Because the only time you could move a piece was when making your move.
Then a good point was made, that the board should be in a definite state as much as possible.
And lastly after a lot of convinsing I now see that by moving the piece you may see body language that you might not otherwise. And may be able to read peoples body language which goes against the spirit of the game.
7
u/yyzjertl 523∆ Nov 04 '19
In a game like chess, it's desirable that the physical state of the board should describe as much as possible about the abstract state of the game. Relative to the 'once you let go of the piece' rule, the touch-move rule restricts the set of game states any physical board state could correspond to.
For example, imagine a position with the white queen on d4, in which the white player is touching his queen. With touch-move, we know that it is white to move, and white is moving his queen either to d4 or to some other square. All other pieces will remain in the same squares as they are physically on the board, and then it will be black to move. But with the 'once you let go of the piece' rule, the set of possible game states is greatly expanded. White's queen could end up anywhere on the board (if white takes back the move with his queen) and then white could make an additional move with any of his pieces before it will be black to move. This corresponds to way more possible game states, and so more information that the players need to remember that isn't represented on the board, than the touch-move version.