"Basic Rules of Play" are incomplete

Reference: https://old.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=208&view=article

Start

Since a few years FIDE decided to divide the chess rules in 2 sections: the "Basic rules of play" and the "Competition rules". Rated FIDE games are required to abide by both, while other competition forms are advised to do the same. The rules for the remainder of the chess games - non-competitive games if you consider those to exist - are left to your imagination.

Issue

What I wish to propose is that the "Basic rules of play" are insufficient to decide all rule issues which might arise during a chess game and therefore must be supplemented by the "Competition rules" or an alternative set of "Competitions rules". Without any contract between them, the players are forced to take refuge in the only rule extensions available which are the "Competition rules" defined in the FIDE laws. You can't leave situations undecided when directions are available.

The issues I am concerned with are in article 5 and relate to the "termination of the game" and the game scores. In the past when the rules were unified, there were sufficient supplements in article 9 to cover the termination targets but eliminating article 9 from the "Basic rules of play" leaves big holes in the safety net.

When you now read article 5, you will see there are no terminations for repetitions or for phases where nothing happens - i.e. no pawn moves, no captures. When the players do not find a way to checkmate their opponent, they can only stop the game by agreement (except for the few positions where no checkmate is possible, see article 5.2.2),

Examples

But what if they don't agree? Or what when they are engines not programmed to seek for termination? Two engines might both believe they are superior and decide that trying their luck is always better than offering or accepting a draw! Recently we saw an even more powerful example. In a grandmaster tournament with the world's top grandmasters, a meta-rule (not a game rule) was introduced that black only needed a draw in order to be given a win. Of course, there was compensation for white in the tournament but that doesn't matter in addressing the theoretical issue. Acting by the "Basic rules of play" the white player should never offer or accept a draw but continue to play and attempt to win by exhaustion. As long as the game continues, there is no way to assign an endscore, not even when the players are continuously repeating the same moves!

Incompleteness

I guess you get the point I am making. Though illustrated with practical examples, what we are looking at is really a theoretical problem of the basic rule system. It is incomplete by mathematical standards which is only forgivable when it is impossible to repair - such as in certain formal mathematical systems. The relevant repairs are available in article 9.6 if we break the glass ceiling between the "Basic rules of play" and the "Competition rules".

Time

Now, there is of course the other infinity issue which is infinite thinking. Here too, the "Competition rules" bring relief but it requires a lot of tuning. Look at all the articles about clock handling and arbitration. And how much thinking time do you assign to out of competition games?

Resolution

My suggestion to FIDE would not be to include some "Competition rules" in the basic rules but to create some template rules which would handle the theoretical incompleteness while permitting the players (or organizations) to finetune them to particular events. Their characteristic is that they are dramatically oversized to keep them from interfering with any sort of extended rule set - competition wise or from the world of composition. Their only aim is to terminate and I don't care how fast.

A: Every move must be completed within a billion hours.

B: When a position (defined with the common constraints) occurs one billion times, it is a draw.

C. When no pawn has moved and no unit was taken for a billion moves, it is a draw.

Deadness

In another thread I had a long discussion about the evaluation of deadness (article 5.2.2) and how it depends on the termination rules. Then I realized it is much simpler to address the termination issue separately as in the current topic. To make "The basic rules of play" complete, it is necessary to include some termination rule(s). Once they are there, it is obvious that deadness can always be positively identified by analyzing finite move series until you reach one of the "billion" limits.

That does not complete the deadness discussion but makes it much easier to contextualize while enabling a different approach to its evaluation!

Diagram

The diagram below serves as an example for the whole topic. While it is not dead (checkmate is possible), players or engines might chose to play on for ever and ever when no termination rules intervene such as with the "Basic rules of play".

50 moves