50 move rule for draw

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Avatar of dlewis3553

Does anyone know the rule?

Avatar of JRockJam
Its where if no pawn moves foward or any peice is captured after 50 moves its a draw
Thats a rule to prevent boredom
Avatar of MissBlueTally

That rule sucks cause in 10 min Blitz i am 95 percent of the time far in front on time so it disadvantages me

Avatar of glamdring27

It doesn't disadvantage anyone, unless you have one of those highly rare cases where there is a forced mate but it takes longer than 50 moves.  If you can't mate in 50 moves you don't deserve a win, however much time is on your clock, in just the same way someone doesn't deserve a win if they run out of time with an obviously won position.

Avatar of SouthWestRacingNews

And how does the computer know if I move or not?

 

 

If I blink my eyes, does that count as one move or two?  

Avatar of MARattigan
glamdring27 wrote:

It doesn't disadvantage anyone, unless you have one of those highly rare cases where there is a forced mate but it takes longer than 50 moves. ...

These are far from rare cases. It probably applies to at least half of all forced wins.

(In fact as stated it would apply to almost all - you probably meant "... but it cannot be won within the 50 move rule".)

Avatar of knighttour2
MARattigan wrote:
glamdring27 wrote:

It doesn't disadvantage anyone, unless you have one of those highly rare cases where there is a forced mate but it takes longer than 50 moves. ...

These are far from rare cases. It probably applies to at least half of all forced wins.

 

It's not even remotely close to half of all forced wins.  Q up is a forced win.  Q + R is a forced win.  Two extra queens is a forced win.  3 extra queens is a forced win.  An extra Q, R, B, +6 pawns is a forced win.  And so on.

The percentage of forced winning positions that can only be converted in 51+ moves without a capture or pawn move is a tiny, tiny fraction of all possible forced winning positions.  Certain R + B v R endings require more than 50 moves depending on the placement of the pieces, ditto for 2 N v P, but that's about it.

Avatar of Optimissed

I thought it'd been altered to 75 moves for the rare, 1 in 10,000 cases that take more than 50.

Avatar of MARattigan
Optimissed wrote:

I thought it'd been altered to 75 moves for the rare, 1 in 10,000 cases that take more than 50.

It's been dropped altogether unless the game is subject to FIDE competition rules. In the latter case the claimable 50 move rule remains; the 75 move rule is mandatory.

Avatar of MARattigan
knighttour2 wrote:
MARattigan wrote:
glamdring27 wrote:

It doesn't disadvantage anyone, unless you have one of those highly rare cases where there is a forced mate but it takes longer than 50 moves. ...

These are far from rare cases. It probably applies to at least half of all forced wins.

 

It's not even remotely close to half of all forced wins.  Q up is a forced win.  Q + R is a forced win.  Two extra queens is a forced win.  3 extra queens is a forced win.  An extra Q, R, B, +6 pawns is a forced win.  And so on.

The percentage of forced winning positions that can only be converted in 51+ moves without a capture or pawn move is a tiny, tiny fraction of all possible forced winning positions.  Certain R + B v R endings require more than 50 moves depending on the placement of the pieces, ditto for 2 N v P, but that's about it.

You have missed a few, e.g. KQRRBBNNPPPPPPPPKQRRBBNNPPPPPPPP and KQNKRBN to name but two. For the former it is obvious that no forced win that takes more than 5,600 moves could be won within the 50 move rule; for the latter it is obvious that no forced win that takes more than 250 moves could be won with the 50 move rule in place. So, for example, the following position which is mate in 543 could not be won with the rule in place and if you look at the histogram here https://syzygy-tables.info/?fen=6NQ/3nk3/5b2/8/1r6/5K2/8/8_b_-_-_0_1 already about 8%  of the won positions in this endgame would not be won within the 50 move rule.

Haworth's law (http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/36276/) conjectures an exponential rise in the longest forced mate values as a function of the number of men. I believe it was conjectured after the 3-4-5 man Nalimov tablebases were created but appears to be perfectly on track with the production of the 6 and 7 man tables. 

If Haworth's law holds up to 32 men then according to the back of my envelope, the maximum 32 man forced mate would need about 8x10¹⁰  moves.
Moreover, with the same intuition that prompted the law, it might be expected that the average number of moves in a forced mate would rise exponentially with the number of men. Since the maximum number of moves enforced by the 50 move rule rises only linearly then, with the assumption stated, the percentage of forced mate positions that cannot be achieved within the rule would also rise exponentially.  But these percentages would apply to total numbers of positions that also rise very rapidly according to the number of men.

In that case "at least half", while true, would in all probability be a ridiculous understatement.   

Avatar of glamdring27

And what percentage of games end with a position like that?

Avatar of MARattigan
glamdring27 wrote:

And what percentage of games end with a position like that?

Very few. It's not mate and nobody is likely to resign. They might agree a draw.

But if the game ends, the 50 move rule ceases to apply. It applies only before the game has ended, e.g. in this position, which is fairly common, but it's not known if it's a forced win for either side.

If it is and the above reasoning holds good, mate would almost certainly not be forcible within the 50 move rule.

Avatar of glamdring27

Show me a sensible 50-move game from that position that doesn't involve either a pawn move or a capture, and that doesn't deserve to be called a draw and I'll agree.

Avatar of MARattigan

@glamdring27

I can't show you any theoretically accurate continuation from even the seven man position that I would call sensible. I can show you a tablebase line (below) but it makes no sense to me. What is sensible in an endgame is very much dependent on how fully one understands the endgame.

Black to play

Do you fully understand the KQNKRBN ending? Does the example make sense to you? If so, congratulations, but bear in mind that the difficulty of endgames also increases exponentially with the number of men, so even if the example looks sensible to you, you might not expect a theoretically accurate continuation from the thirty two man position to look sensible.

Certainly I wouldn't attempt to give you such. I suspect that if there is a win, the first phase would not exceed 50 moves. But under the 50 move rule, no phase of a forced mate could exceed 50 moves, so you should really be asking for a 5,600 move example.

Edit: @glamdring27 Crap para deleted. See post #19 for original.

There are many recorded games that have exceeded the fifty move rule and may look sensible to you, but it's unlikely any of them were theoretically accurate from the starting position. In any case you'd probably think they deserve to be called a draw.

Avatar of woton
BorgQueen wrote:

In the 40 years or so that I have been playing chess, not one single game has ended due to claiming the 50 move rule.   Not one.  But I am glad it is there otherwise games with perpetual checking (where the 3rd repetition is avoidable) can go on for stupid amounts of moves.

I've had many games where I claimed a draw under the 50 move rule.  It's usually a K+R vs. K+R or BOC where my opponent is trying to run my clock down.  I'm sure that a position was repeated three times during the 50 move fiasco, but it's easier to count 50 moves than spotting non-consecutive repetitions

Avatar of glamdring27
MARattigan wrote:

@glamdring27

I can't show you any theoretically accurate continuation from even the seven man position that I would call sensible. I can show you a tablebase line (below) but it makes no sense to me. What is sensible in an endgame is very much dependent on how fully one understands the endgame.

Black to play

Do you fully understand the KQNKRBN ending? Does the example make sense to you? If so, congratulations, but bear in mind that the difficulty of endgames also increases exponentially with the number of men, so even if the example looks sensible to you, you might not expect a theoretically accurate continuation from the thirty two man position to look sensible.

Certainly I wouldn't attempt to give you such. I suspect that if there is a win, the first phase would not exceed 50 moves. But under the 50 move rule, no phase of a forced mate could exceed 50 moves, so you should really be asking for a 5,600 move example.

If there is no win, then of course any fifty move game that involves no pawn move or capture is in fact sensible, even if it doesn't look to be. You can easily make up such a game yourself. You need only take care not to invoke the triple repetition rule before fifty moves have elapsed. Of course such a game would deserve to be called a draw, but this is not surprising if the starting position is a draw.

There are many recorded games that have exceeded the fifty move rule and may look sensible to you, but it's unlikely any of them were theoretically accurate from the starting position. In any case you'd probably think they deserve to be called a draw.


Sure, that position is a complicated one, but we already established that will almost never happen.  In the post I was replying to you posted the starting position as an example of a position in which there's no forced win under the 50 move rule!

Avatar of MARattigan

@glamdring27

Well, I have to admit my post #11 was nonsense for the reasons already pointed out by @knighttour2 before I posted it.

When there is a large discrepancy in material between the sides there will, except for exceptional cases, be a fairly short win (say in no more than a few tens of moves) for the side with the greater material. Such positions will increasingly dominate the legal positions with larger numbers of men which in turn dominate the positions with fewer men, so the assumption that the average mate length increases exponentially is clearly rubbish. 

As you said, these positions will be rare as a fraction of all positions.  

  

Avatar of Denis_UA

Thanks

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happy.png

Avatar of Chessflyfisher
JRockJam wrote:
Its where if no pawn moves foward or any peice is captured after 50 moves its a draw
Thats a rule to prevent boredom

The rule states officially a capture of any kind. The rule keeps a game going into infinity.