Comments by jackiam
I don't believe many people would say "in Chess the object is to capture the king, not achieve checkmate." I don't think anyone would say that. But that is what Abbott said about Ultima, as a direct quote.
The extra clarifying statement he added at the end ("not achieve checkmate") specifically denies the possibility that he meant "this is equivalent to checkmate."
If the rules of Chess stated "in Chess the object is to capture the king, not achieve checkmate" then that is what would happen. Players would likely still resign before the game is over, as often happens now, but someone determined to play the game to completion would have to get the enemy king off the board to win. I think the wording that was used makes this very clear.
The examples Abbott laid out show that even when the king is guaranteed to be captured on the next turn, play still continues with both players moving normally. If the "winning" player doesn't perform the capture, then they don't win, and the game would continue until one of the kings was captured.
It seems that Abbot suggests the latter.
Could you elaborate on this? Apologies if I'm overlooking something, as I may have parsed through everything Abbott has ever written at this point, and it's a lot to keep track of.
From what I've seen, in all 4 instances where Abbott published an explanation about the rules of Ultima over the span of 42 years, he has always said you can capture the enemy king directly. In none of them does he suggest you're allowed to undo this outcome if it resulted from an illegal move, nor does he otherwise imply you have the right to redo moves without consequence. Again however, if I've overlooked something please let me know.
The only practical issue is what should happen on an unforced king sacrifice: does the player lose through having made an illegal move, or should he take the move back and play another?
I'm not seeing anything Abbott has said that outlines special considerations for someone ending their turn with their king in an attacked position. If there are no rules addressing it, then presumably it would need to be resolved either by the rules or by the players making something up themselves. If it's determined by the rules, the only rule that seems related at all to this scneario is the first one: you are allowed to capture the enemy king.
Looking at Shogi, the 将棋連合規定 offers a similar resolution: If a player's move leaves their own king in check, and their opponent points it out, the player immediately loses the game. The outcome of this scenario is mechanically equivalent to the opponent noticing the king is being attacked and capturing it.
Then again, on the chessvariants page for Shogi, I don't see any mention of how these types of situations are resolved. Presumably it is left as an exercise for the players to decide how they'd like to resolve a rules breach when it arises. Perhaps that could be assumed here as well.
All I know is that throughout his entire life, Abbott has been very consistent with his choice of wording for what "the object of the game" is in Ultima, and yet in our "object of the game" section we aren't respecting that wording. We're actually saying the exact opposite.
When a game's creator states "the object of the game is to capture the king" multiple times, and eventually elaborates to specifically say "the object of the game is to capture the king, not achieve checkmate," it seems inappropriate to write that the object of the game is to "achieve checkmate."
I'd hope we could just write what the creator said, instead of the exact opposite of what he said. His own words aren't going to misrepresent him.
From a game-theoretical perspective there is no ambiguity in the rules: checkmate and stalemate are both won positions, whether the game ends there or whether one in some cases would have to play one more move to actually capture the king.
This isn't correct because players aren't perfect agents. They do not always identify and make the most optimal move. It is possible that someone in "checkmate" will move their king into an easily missed "check" (e.g. a check from the coordinator), and the opponent won't realize they could still capture the king.
Whether this is allowed or not clearly makes a difference when played in any setting with a third-party overseer (an arbiter, a computer client, etc).
he actually changed his mind at some point how the game should be played
Well, we know this is the case to some degree because the 1968 rules are very different from the 1963 rules. He then decided those had been a bad idea, and went back to the 1963 rules.
He even stated in both 1962 and 1963 that the game was still freshly developed and may still have issues. It isn't that surprising for some language of a newly designed game to be contradictory; an aspect of the game started out one way, and later in the design process was changed, but the rest of the rules weren't updated accordingly to reflect the change.
It should be assumed the part of the contradiction that was intended was the part the creator later explained was intended (capturing the king), especially when he also said the other part of the contradiction was not intended (the checkmate).
E.g. an on-line interface would be likely to make it impossible to enter moves that expose the king to begin with, and perhaps automatically resign for a player that is checkmated.
This reminded me that Abbott promoted "Zillions of Games" as a software that accurately enforces the rules of Ultima.
I just found and installed this piece of software and tried a game of Ultima on it. You can play against the computer or against other people.
In this interface that Abbott promoted as correct, you are allowed to enter moves that expose the king. You are allowed to move your king from a safe position into an attacked position. It does not automatically resign, allowing the opponent to make a mistake and miss a capture. You must capture the king to end the game, whereupon it says "King captured. Black wins!"
what is the proper procedure for claiming the victory when the opponent exposes his king to capture
According to the software Abbott promoted, the proper procedure is to capture the king.
I would not exclude that the sentence was just intended to convey that stalemating is an alternative.
No. As someone who loves Robert Abbott's work, I'm not okay with this blatant misrepresentation of his words. His paragraph again was:
The first puzzle is Mate in 1 and all the others are Mate in 2. This follows the conventions of chess problems, even though in Ultima the object is to capture the king, not achieve check mate. So, Mate in 1 should be translated to Capture the king in 2 moves (that is: White moves, Black moves, then White moves and captures the king). Mate in 2 translates to Capture the king in 3 moves.
After saying "in Ultima the object is to capture the king, not achieve check mate," he elaborated with "So" and even explained what he meant with "(that is: White moves, Black moves, then White moves and captures the king)." There is no way to misunderstand this language, and the attempt to do so makes me question the motivation behind it.
And again, these puzzles which require the king to be manually captured per the rules of Ultima were made in 1964, and explained in 2004. It makes it very clear what Abbott's intention was, and the only interface Abbott promoted for playing Ultima works that way as well.
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I think it is hard to argue against "The object of the game is to capture the enemy king." This is a direct quote from Abbott. There's no way to misinterpret that sentence to mean the object is checkmate.
From what I see, both the oldest source and newest source from Abbott agree on this. Even if the 1968 edition (which Abbott is on record disavowing by the way) includes contradictory language, it still says "The object of the game is to capture this king." This statement can't be ignored.
These statements are very straightforward and impossible to misunderstand. Every source from Abbott is in agreement. In each source, the object of the game is explicitly stated to be "to capture the king."
I believe "The object of the game is to capture the enemy king" makes it clear what the object of the game is, and there is only one way to interpret it. Even if some of these sources include contradictory language that also states the exact opposite, not all of them do (i.e. the rules as explained by Abbott on his website state that the object is to capture the enemy king, and they also specifically state that there is no checkmate). The only object every source from Abbott includes and agrees on is "to capture the enemy king."
I feel this may be a bit of a stretch. This interpretation would contradict the object of the game that is explicitly stated in the same line. Rather than assume Abbott was thinking of checking behavior and castling when he said the king "moves and captures" as the chess king does, it would probably make more sense to read his statement literally: the king "moves [1 square in any direction] and captures [by displacement]" as the chess king does. Taking his sentence at face value has the added benefit of not contradicting his very next sentence in the paragraph as well.
Even if there was a source in the past where Abbott indicated "the object is to capture the king" and at the same time he said "the object is to checkmate the king," that only tells us one of those contradictory statements would have to be wrong. Given that Abbott wrote an in-depth explanation about the object of Ultima on his website, it seems clear which option he intended to go with.
I am looking at this page mentioned earlier, and Abbott is even more explicit here.
Note that if checkmate was the object of Ultima, there would have been no reason to include a paragraph here at all. Attempting to find checkmate is how these types of puzzles work by default. Abbott went out of his way to write and include this paragraph about how the object of Ultima is not the same as chess, and to make it completely unambiguous. It's pretty clear he didn't want any further confusion about this.
Going through the content of Abbott's explanation, I'll start by highlighting the short answer:
In this case, he not only said "to capture the king" is the object of the game (matching his other sources), but this time he even elaborated that achieving checkmate is not the object of the game. This explanation directly addresses the contradiction that was found in one of the older sources and leaves no room for misunderstanding.
However, in case he still hadn't been clear enough yet, Abbott went on to explain the actual turn sequence that ends a game of Ultima:
Note that in Abbott's example of how an Ultima game ends, Black makes a legal move that leaves his king under attack. It is obvious from this that there is no checkmate, otherwise Black could not have moved. Abbott's detailed move-by-move explanation removes all ambiguity and clears up any potential confusion. It rules out any possibility that checkmate is the intended object of the game.
On the Chess Variants article, there is also a 4th source linked, the original 1962 Article introducing the game. This article was brought up earlier, but again, this source matches the rest of them, clearly stating "The object of the game is to capture this king." The rules include no mention of checkmate at all. All it says about checking is "The same rules for declaring check apply as in chess." Of course, there are no rules that require you to declare check in chess, so that's a moot point.
Additionally, I see on Abbott's site that he was really enthusiastic about David Howe's "extensive" and "especially useful" write-up of an Ultima game ending. I found his write-up.
These are the last three moves of the game in his write-up:
Note that in this write-up, White moves a Chameleon next to Black's King, which Black has no way to avoid. Black is then required to make another move. White then captures Black's King to end the game.
This is another specific example for how an Ultima game ends, with Black making a move that ends with his king under attack, and White then capturing Black's king.
Earlier it was mentioned that Abbott recommended the chessvariants page at one point, but he did so in the context of wanting to share admiration for David Howe's animated illustrations. It appeared to be a short respectful way to introduce the topic, giving a general compliment lacking any specificity. Based on the rest of the paragraph, Abbott makes it clear that the part of the site's explanation he was impressed with was the animated illustrations that explain the piece movements. Even if all the context is ignored in order to assume the compliment was well-researched and literal, saying something is the best option available doesn't suggest that it can't be improved upon, or that the speaker made a point of proofreading the site in the first place.
Additionally, shortly after that paragraph where he says chessvariants is a good site, he then links to his own page which he had just written himself, where he states multiple times that the object of Ultima is to capture the enemy king, and that the object of Ultima is not to checkmate, and he even explains move-by-move how an Ultima game ends in order to make the object of the game perfectly clear.
Actually... Abbott mentions multiple times, across several different pages, that his Ultima puzzles (which required you to capture the enemy king) were created in 1964. This means the 1963 rules, which these puzzles were utilizing, also intended for you to capture the enemy king.
With the Abbott of 1964 and the Abbott of 2004 being in agreement that the object of Ultima is to capture the king, the conclusion seems pretty straightforward.