If you were the arbiter: Episode 2

As I wrote in episode 1, for some years, I was a chess arbiter. I discovered that many players, when talking about the rule of three-times-repetition, they intended a repetition of moves. But the regulations don't mention the word moves at all, instead, the word position is being used.

In fact, a game is drawn if a position appears three times, with the same player to move and the same potential; it doesn't matter if the sequence of moves repeats itself exactly or not, and it doesn't matter how distant the three positions are in terms of moves. To use an image: there must be three identical photos of the same position.

Simple? Not always.

I'll show you three cases of presumed drawn by repetition; it's up to you to determine if it's a real repetition or not. All the positions are built up artificially, so please don't consider their technical aspect. The solutions can be found at the end of the article.

Case #1:

Case #2:

Case #3 (probably the trickiest one; don't stop at the first impression!):

Solutions:

Case #1: In the first photo Black can take the Pawn on c4 en passant, so, potentially, this position is different from the other two; the game is NOT drawn.

Case #2: The three positions are exactly the same but the two Knights swapped each other in the second position. Is this particularly important? No. Potentially, nothing changes and the game is drawn. The same concept applies with two swapping Rooks (or any other pair of identical pieces).

Case #3: As said, the trickiest one. Why? At first glance, it's not drawn because in the first two photos White has the right to castle and in the third one this opportunity is vanished.

But...just a moment! White cannot castle because he's in check! Castling would mean to play an illegal move! Then, potentially, the three photos might look identical. But all this reasoning could generate confusion and more doubts than certainties.

So, where's the truth? To respond correctly to this enigma we must consider a small paragraph of the regulations which goes as follows: "A player loses his right to castle only after moving his King or Rook". This means that in the first and second photo the potential is different from the third one, and the game must continue.

Again, don't get lost in the vastness of the chess universe!