Arisktotle wrote:
Still it is not a dead position after: 1. .. Qxb4+ 2. Kxb4 a6 3. Kc5 a5 4. b4
It looks like a dead position to me. What am I missing? I don't see how either side can mate after 4.b4.
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GYG wrote:
It looks like a dead position to me. What am I missing? I don't see how either side can mate after 4.b4.
Oops, I don't see it either! My mind missed the presence of the b2-pawn. Gotta go back to bed. This is gonna be a very bad day for me.
So that is precisely the right idea though it is obviously not that complicated - except for me 
Just picked up on your rating. I should have been much more careful with your comments!
This is a 12-year-old thread... revived by a troll for the sole purpose to put some dirty word "jokes" inside a huge wall of text. Why would anyone want to reply to that? It's a mystery to me.
I never care about the history of a thread when it touches upon an interesting subject. It is also a 'live' subject since the rules change over time. For instance, the automatic 75M and 5REP draw rules were introduced which have an impact on the dead position rule which is at the base of this topic!
Wait nevermind, it is inevitable stalemate, so yeah.
I wonder if a player should win automatically in a position where he has no choice but to checkmate the opponent, such as here:
If black flags after white plays Qh5+, should black win anyway since he has no choice but to checkmate white next move? Could this be an example of a case where the player who runs out of time should win?
EndgameEnthusiast2357 wrote:
I wonder if a player should win automatically in a position where he has no choice but to checkmate the opponent.
I asked the same question 40 years ago in relation to the dead position rule but NO. There are no regulations about inevitable checkmates other than that they guarantee you a draw after timing out!
In that time I also saw a position with 7 or 8 inevitable checking moves before the inevitable checkmate. Can't reconstruct it. And there is a topic "Masters only" in the Endgame Study Forum you have probably seen with pawns running towards their inevitable victory.
Like this one?
To be precise, this one: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/mate-in-6-masters-only-d#comment-23642140
Btw, @BishopTakesH7 also posted one recently. Something like "checkmate in no more than 5 moves".
I assume such a position is a draw if white flags, but a loss for black if black flags?
Yes! You can't reward black for losing in two ways simultaneously 
But he gets rewarded with a draw if white flags even though he is already checkmated.
EndgameEnthusiast2357 wrote:
But he gets rewarded with a draw if white flags even though he is already checkmated.
Nobody ever gets a draw when he is "already checkmated", only after he times out and it is inevitable that he would checkmate his opponent - or cannot be checkmated himself with help play - or in one of the special USCF/chess.com conditions discussed above . If an arbiter cannot separate the moments of checkmate and timeout it's the checkmate that counts! But "timeout" was a starter in this topic, not checkmate. Checkmates only appear in the analysis.
What I tried to say is that you can't reward someone with a draw who double whammied on "timing out" and "the prospect of being inevitably checkmated" - as could happen in the last diagram .
I meant that the position is dead only if black plays 1...Qxb4+. So white doesn't get to recapture since the game is already terminated. Obviously there are lots of ways to mate if the queens stay on.
Ah, I didn't see the Qb4 move in the analysis column! Still it is not a dead position after: 1. .. Qxb4+ 2. Kxb4 a6 3. Kc5 a5 4. b4
But though it's wrong, it still shows the composition idea!