"Larry" wrote in rec.games.chess.analysis:

Gentlemen,

I have played for years and love the game but have run into a
situation that I cannot decipher by standard chess rules and
definitions. I apologize if it is a situation that is covered by
basics, which I am not understanding but I have never seen this
before.

The board setup is this:

Black Rook on QN1
Black King on Q6
White King on QN6 and
White Pawn on Q5

White has just been placed in check from the Black Rook and it is
Whites move. White moves K to QB6 -- check. This is crazy right? Ahh
not so fast.

Normally White King could not move within one square of the opponents
King because it would violate the basic principle of placing itself in
a position to be captured. In this case however the White Pawn infers
a special protective relationship to the White King such that it is
not eligible to be captured by the Black King on the next move. The
White King, in fact, has checked the Black King and the Black King
must move from check!

Is this a correct analysis of the situation and interpretation of the
rules?


No, it's not.
The rule describing the movement of the king makes the move Kc6
physically possible; the rule that it's not allowed to put your own king
in check makes it physically possible yet illegal.

Here's the official chess rules from FIDE:

quote
3.8 b. The king is said to be 'in check', if it is attacked by one or
more of the opponent's pieces, even if such pieces cannot themselves
move. Declaring a check is not obligatory.

3.9 No piece can be moved that will expose its own king to check or
leave its own king in check.
/quote

So according to rule 3.9 of the FIDE rules of chess you are not allowed
to expose the white king to check on c6. Kc6+ is an _illegal_ move.

It has nothing to do with "the king being captured". The rules of chess
do not speak about a king actually "being captured". Only about a king
in check, in checkmate or in a stalemate position. People using the
"capture the king" idea to understand or interprete the rules are in
effect _adding_ a new rule to the existing ones, creating _new_ problems
not covered by the rules of the game.

As you can see there's only one reference to the king and capturing, and
it's placed between semicolons:

quote
1.2 The objective of each player is to place the opponent's king 'under
attack' in such a way that the opponent has no legal move which would
avoid the 'capture' of the king on the following move. The player who
achieves this goal is said to have 'checkmated' the opponent's king and
to have won the game. The opponent whose king has been checkmated has
lost the game.
/quote

You are not allowed to reach this objective with Kc6+

+++

Discussion about simultanious checks pops up every now and then in
different formats. They're often very ingenious! The answer is a simple,
"no", as it's an _illegal_ move you describe. Not "physically" illegal,
but "illegal because the rules we all agreed to" say so.

Sometimes people forget that chess is not a phenomenon that happens, and
can be observed, after which general laws are defined to explain its
behaviour; chess is a game with _preset_ rules simply not allowing the
move you describe.



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