I found this on rec.puzzles and thought it might be an idea to cross post it
to rgcm...

"Andrew Bull" wrote in message
...
This puzzle occurred to me the other day, though I doubt it's new; and I'm
not sure if it's trivial, unsolvable or somewhere in between, but here
goes:

Two players alternately place a chess piece (from the standard set of 32)
onto a chess board. The position must always be legal (or able to be made
legal by adding the missing king(s) to (a) suitable square(s)). If at any
point in this process, either king is in checkmate, the first player wins;
otherwise, the second player wins. Given perfect play, who will win?

When this sort of thing is posted I generally don't participate: I just
stand back in awestruck admiration at the way people figure this sort of
stuff out. But I will add my 2c here. I'm not sure I understand the
rationale behind the winner and loser.As stated:
White/Black mates - White wins
Draw - Black wins
As a chess variant wouldn't it make more sense to have:
White mates - White wins
Black mates - Black wins
draw - draw

I hate it when people hijack your thread and start asking questions of their
own but this seems to make more sense. Initially I'd have to say a draw is a
heavy favourite but, hang on a minute, rules are also needed about check: Do
you have to move out of check? Does the mate have to be possible in the
rules of chess ie you can't have a mate simultaneously by, say, six pieces.
What about captures? I think there's mileage in this problem but aisi it
needs restating.

cheers

dd