Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Longest Checkmate in Chess from DTM Endgames?

Author: Mike Hood

Date: 13:52:17 02/04/04

Go up one level in this thread


On February 04, 2004 at 14:57:39, Ed Trice wrote:

>
>
>>>White has a mate in 262.
>>>
>>>[D]1N6/1RK5/5n2/8/8/8/5n2/6k1 w - - 0 1
>>
>>This means that the position is drawn by the 50 move rule.
>>The more interesting question is what is the longest possible forced mate in
>>chess.
>>
>>If the opponent can stop the mate in the middle and claim a draw by the 50 move
>>rule then there is no forced mate in chess(there is forced mate in similiar game
>>that does not include the 50 move rule but I am more interested in chess).
>>
>>Uri
>
>Recall that FIDE changed the 50-move rule to 100 at one point, then back to 75
>(I think) then back to 50. The idea was that if you are in a provable winning
>position, you should not be forced to abandon it as drawn.
>
>I think positions that are very long wins without the Drawn-in-N-Moves rule are
>still very interesting.
>
>There is no way to keep FIDE from changing the rule again, for example.

The reasoning behind the existence of the 50-rule move makes the reasons for its
removal obvious. It used to be thought that if two players played 50 moves
without capturing a piece or moving a pawn they were just moving around in
circles and would never reach checkmate. The creation of endgame tablebases
proved this assumption is not always true, the first refutation being in the
case of KBN-KN. This refutation justifies (or at least explains) the lifting of
the 50-move rule. My suspicion is that the reason for the re-imposing of the
50-move rule was complaints from traditionalists.




This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.