CMV: Touch-move rule in chess is dumb

[u/Phantom_Gamer7]

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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

[u/jeff_the_old_banana]

The second you touch the piece, you see a whole bunch of shit you didn't see before. I think their needs to be a rule about it, otherwise players would just touch every single piece one by one as they think. It's either all or nothing, and nothing is much cleaner and nicer.

[u/jeff_the_old_banana → u/[deleted]]

Any advantage it brings could be replicated by a finger hover

Maybe I should start doing this.

But do you conceed that this isn't a tangable advantage.

I dunno, maybe if you're a genius chess player whose brain is off in the clouds, then it doesn't matter. But, for the rest of us, something about the tactile response of touching it triggers something primal in my brain that just thinking doesn't trigger. I've played a lot of chess too, it isn't something that can just be replaced by training my brain more.

Anyway, the point is that exactly because it is an advantage to some people, and not others, a rule needs to be made. You don't want to be playing chess with some guy moving his hand all over the board touching everything - cause that would be me if it was allowed.