Chess variant where king is captured While trying to teach my 4 year oldson the rules of chess, I found it difficult to explain the rules of check, checkmate and stalemate. Having already explained the moves of each piece and how capturing works, I found it much easier to say simply that one wins by capturing the other king.

Was this variant ever considered and would strategy be significantly different from normal chess? What are the essential differences between normal chess and this (arguably simpler to explain) variant?

What I can think of are the following:


there's more chance of losing due to a "silly mistake", by "stepping into check" or failing to move out of it.
a particular kind of stalemate is now impossible. If one is not currently checked but can only move into a check, then one loses, whereas in normal chess this is a stalemate.


These don't seem like crucial problems. Am I overlooking something else? How to "motivate" the normal rules when teaching chess to a child?
Other than making stalemate impossible as you already mentioned, it doesn't seem to me like this would make a meaningful difference (or any difference) to the strategy of the game. If you allow your King to be captured, that's presumably the worst move you could possibly make, so with best play the King wouldn't be captured until after it has been checkmated conventionally anyway.

Especially when teaching the rules to a four-year-old, I'd say this house rule is totally benign, as long as it's eventually explained that it's nonstandard, once he's got a better grasp on the game.