How do you capture OTB ?

When playing over the board, how do you execute a capture?

Do you pick up the capturing piece first, or the captured piece?

I discuss this topic in a new blog post:

Chess for Engineers

I pick up the capturing piece first but I don't think it matters at least not in any games I have played

I used to move the capturing piece into the captured piece, placing it on the square while picking up the PoW. But I've started picking up the captured piece first lately. That's what most serious players seem to do. It's cleaner but imo harder to follow from the other side if you're noob.

Might be easier to pick up the captured piece first leaving the square empty for your piece but not sure if there's an expected or standard way to do it.

But if you're playing somebody tricky you've got to stay alert to where the pieces are. There's a great video out there of GM Maurice Ashley playing a "play for dough" park player with some minor sleight of hand capture controversy about mid-game.

I think the touch move rule, in a nutshell, says that if you touch your piece first, you have to move that piece somewhere as long as it's legal to. If you touch your opponent's piece, you have to capture said piece, again, as long as it's legal. Etiquette really doesn't require you to touch one or the other first, I've played both ways and seen it played both ways for many years.

Depends on the distance.

It makes little difference, but I'd say most pick their piece first, then pick up the opponent's piece with the same hand, and in a fluid motion, replace the captured piece with their piece.

For me, like others, I remove the piece first (to denote that I am intending to capture the piece) so others will know first that I am indeed capturing a piece rather than moving my piece elsewhere. But for pawn promotion, I take the promoting piece first before removing the pawn off the board.

Depends on the situation:  which is more efficient.

That's an interesting idea.

But I have to admit, picking up the piece to be captured first feels cleaner somehow.

I actually think it has to do with the way they visualize. When you play chess at a high level, the board is more of a reference point, and much of the calculation is done on imagined positions. For example you may calculate 3 moves forward, and then stop... this is now your main junction, and you'll use this position to calculate many more things, never actually coming back to the board position.

And when you visualize you're doing 1 of two things:

1) Add a piece to a square
2) Remove a piece from a square

There's no such thing as moving, just updating squares in one of those two ways.

So when you remove a piece to be captured, then retreat your arm back towards your side of the board, for a moment an action has been taken on the board similar to what goes on in the mind i.e. a piece has disappeared.

When you do it all in one smooth motion (picking up the capturing piece first) yes it's more efficient, but for that moment the piece is in transit so to speak, and that never happens in the mind. Breaking it into two separate actions is less efficient but more familiar.

And then of course the opposite is true for new players.

New players can't cleanly visualize moves like this, so removing a piece from the board and letting the broad state linger there feels awkward, while for an experienced player it feels familiar and comfortable.

I prefer this technique.

Did you see it?

To capture an OTB is difficult, You might need an ultraball for that mate.

Piece capturing technique should be an olympic sport with judgment scoring similar to gymnastics.  Dock a tenth of a point if your elbow rubs the top of your King or Queen, dock a quarter of a point if you knock any piece over, and dock a full point if the move is illegal.  Also dock a quarter of a point for inefficient or two-handed capturing!