What's the greatest number of moves that could ever be achieved in a chess game?

Assuming that three-fold repetition nad the 50 move rule are in use, what would be the absolute maximum nuber of moves that could be achieved in a game of chess?

Hi Cubiks_Rube! Good question. If the game is claimed a draw after threefold repetition and 50 moves without a pawn move or a capture, then the longest chess game would have approximately 5950 moves. Someone else may elaborate.

Some dude just posted a 400 move game

But it was more like 80 moves or something and he was just a tool who didn't think anyone would actually look through it

I've seen a 500 move-game. Honestly, it wasn't woodpushing.

Plastic pieces?

http://www.chess.com/blog/kurtgodden/the-longest-possible-chess-game

I didn't read it, though.

Sred wrote:

MuhammadAreez10 wrote:

I've seen a 500 move-game. Honestly, it wasn't woodpushing.

Plastic pieces?

Hehe! Wood pieces. But not played by woodpushers.

Kee-An, I had a game with koala08 that was 1101

If you try to do the 3-fold, but do it a little differently on the 3rd repetition, you might have infinite moves (if there's a bonus)

Yeah, unfortunately it's not thre-fold if you don't claim it, as I found out in a bullet game a few days ago.

I'm pretty sure this one has been asked and answered, many years ago.

http://www.chess.com/blog/kurtgodden/the-longest-possible-chess-game

MrFunisfun, you do realize that it's about repeating positions, not moves?

Fiveofswords wrote:

well....7*14*50 for pawns moves + 14*50 for captures. Just do that math i guess.

oh...you need to add more captures after promoting...+ another 14*50, then I guess you dont need to add the last 50 because its insufficient material to mate draw.

the problem is that i guess the pawns cant actually pass eachother and queen without some capture. so something needs to be subtracted here.

Somewhat flawed.

This is the game that sparked this question of mine.

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=1047432722

yep ;)

assuming, and I am just 12 here so this is just formulating, that you could simply move a pawn,shuffle pieces 49.5 moves, move a pawn, 49.5 moves, so forth and so on until all pawns have promoted, you could do this for 6 moves each pawn, which, not calculating check, would be 6 moves each*8 pawns* 49.5 moves is 2,375 moves, so I am afraid I am not sure how this adds up. if you also add the possible shuffles of a queen for 49.5 moves, the total 2,425.5

oh, I see. black has the sme pawn pushing possibilities as white. so this is where the extram oves come from

There are 400 different positions after each player makes one move apiece. 
There are 72,084 positions after two moves apiece. 
There are 9+ million positions after three moves apiece. 
There are 288+ billion different possible positions after four moves apiece. 

There are 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,00... ways to play the first ten moves of chess. 

The longest chess game theoretically possible is 5,949 moves.

The record of moves without capture is of 100 moves during the Match between Thorton and M. Walker in 1992. 

The number of distinct 40-move games is far greater than the number of electrons in the observable universe.