Has also maintained an active playerbase for 1500+ years

They're going to tell me to google something. I can feel it.

OK, I looked it up on Wikipedia. The bishop and queen were the last to have their moves set changed to the modern form in the 15th or 16th century. But even since then there have been some tweaks, such as the 3 move and 50 move rules for draws, and the orientation of the board. So you could maybe argue no balancing since the 16th century, and only a few bug fixes after that.

Castle was put in place around the 17th century, and en passant wasn't put into the rules until 1880. Both were balance issues being solved.

Possible quick fix: Switch from turn-based to real time mode

Funny story time:

I had someone cheat against me the other day (without me realizing it, because I don't have the game sense to tell), then offer a draw in a clearly winning position. I guess they were trying to avoid detection, but I decided that I didn't want their handout, declined the draw offer, and resigned.

The system immediately flagged them as cheating and refunded my elo, so I guess all's well that ends well.

I bet a bot can beat you at Counter Strike too if we made them as strong as possible like chess bots.

"Butt bots... Sorry. But bots have become..." (Read in Ze Frank voice)

bots and plugs yeah

Also castling and en Passant

That old set excavated in Britain (Lewis Chessmen) had other pieces as well, such as the Berserker.

You are quite correct that an asymetrical game is much harder to balance.

However having identical sides and a symmetric playing field doesn't always guarantee a balanced game. For example, if one piece or position dominates all others it can lead to a lack of viable options and just one way to play, making the game uninteresting. You don't just want the players to have equal strength, you also want the universe of possible playing strategies to contain many different strong options.

Actually it has had balance changes. Chess clock for instance is a balance update between the players, but there's also been balancing between pieces. En passant and castling but also changing how the pieces work (for example bishop).

Despite the obvious symmetry of the game there's still a lot to balance.

I think they meant balance as in the pieces haven't received nerfs or buffs.

It is too simple to be useful in real life: a mere 8 by 8 grid, no fog of war, no technology tree, no random map or spawn position, only 2 players, both sides exact same pieces, etc.

Polytopia addresses these limitations.

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It's ok, we're two steps past them now. I think we're safe.

Eh. My last move was to tie a ballistic missile to a pawn and roll it down a pinball machine. Their move is to keep it from hitting the bottom and exploding. That would keep them occupied for a while.

Nah, staring position is zugzwang, black gets to capitalise on whites blunder in the opening.

Having your opponent make the first move can absolutely be an advantage since it hints to the strategy they're going with.

I typically choose black for that reason.

She's such a Mary Sue.

Rocket League is also like chess. Basically the same, just different.

Every time a piece is about to hit another, the players have to arm wrestle and the winner takes the loser's piece (if you can't arm wrestle then you lose automatically).

You can only move pieces to squares with pictures of crosswalks on them.