On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 22:21:25 -0000, "DDEckerslyke"
wrote:

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


Reading this reply, I realize how terribly I misread the original
problem when I thought that it worked about the way the replier was
saying it should work.

So, holy cow! Any player can play any piece, Player 1 is just trying
to get *either* king in checkmate... So many tricky issues here...

I suspect that Player 1 sticks the black king against a wall, then
tries to start attacking it, either with a queen in the square right
next to it or... as much as I'd love to say two knights...

Hmm, I guess we're back to that question. If you end up with, say,
two knights attacking the king, will the referee say "That's not a
legal position?" I think to make the puzzle work, the answer has to
be yes.

So, as I work through this, I'm forming the opinion that the second
player will win. The second player will quickly put a checking piece
right next to any king on the board, then ensure that the checking
piece can be captured.

Once the second player has stuck a white queen right next to the black
king, and positioned a black rook right next to the white queen so
that it can capture the white queen, there's no way to add an
additional checking white piece without creating an illegal position.

So, if Player 1's first move is the black king, then Player 2 counters
by putting the white queen right next to it.

If Player 1 doesn't start by putting down a King, then player 2 starts
by putting the white queen or a white rook in the middle of the board,
intending to place the black king next to it on the next turn.

Player 1 might try to counter that by putting the black king against a
wall, but where it is still attacked by that white queen or rook, but
I still say that the answer is:

Player 2 can always win! :-) (Still harder to mate than to avoid a
mate.)

Now, if we're allowing illegal positions, then that's a horse of a
different color. In that case, I say that some king will end up
against a wall, completely surrounded and attacked by 3 or 4 pieces!
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