end game rules

just had a question, if your opponent only has his king left in play how many moves does he need to make before the game is considered a draw?
50 without any captures, but I've never actually seen a game go that far. Most players will draw by agreement rather than waste their time making 50 moves, which must be extra annoying in turn-based chess.


Is there a rule on the amount of checks before it is considered a draw. What I mean is If your opponent has only their king and you put them in check a bunch of times but never check mate, is there a point where the game is a draw?



I am assuming your opponent has sufficient material to mate the lone King as well--since if he doesn't have sufficient material, the game is also a draw due to insufficient material.
My son has been in a chess program in his elementry school. The 50 move rule is used a lot in their tournaments. Often they can not figure out how to mate, or they are afraid of making serious moves. Great fun to watch, although a bit frustrating when you see how to do it but can't say anything...

269 moves appears to be the longest game and it ended in a draw. I wonder how many, if any, draw offers were made during the game.

50 moves is a lot. I had actually heard that before but did not believe it was fact..wow
I've actually read somewhere there are endgames which take more then 50 moves to win with perfect play, so in theory, the 50 move rule should be changed in a 75 or even 100 move rule ;)
I think I've read it in J.H. Donner's excellent book "the King" and the endgame was K+2Kt vs K + P. Don't know for sure though. Can anyone confirm there are endgames which take more then 50 moves with perfect play?
There are, but it's considered a draw anyway since you cannot mate within 50 moves.
50 moves is a lot, but it can take a lot of moves to checkmate with knight and bishop, though it is possible. That is why it is not a 20 or 30 move rule.

On Tim Krabbe's excellent, excellent (but all-too-infrequently updated) site, see items #316 and #311. They can be found on this archive page: http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/diary16txt.htm
The endgame can be very strange and does not get the respect it deserves.

From Wikipedia:
During the time periods when the fifty-move rule admitted exceptions, there were a number of revisions. In 1928 FIDE enacted rules that in the rook and bishop versus rook endgame, 132 moves were allowed, since it was twice the 66 moves that were thought to be required at that time (the actual maximal number of moves needed is 59). In 1952 FIDE revised the law, requiring that players agree to an extension for these positions before the first move is made (Whitaker & Hartleb 1960). FIDE rules allowed seventy-five moves for the rook and bishop versus rook (Müller & Lamprecht 2001:299).
At some point, the rule was changed to one hundred moves for such positions. Later more positions requiring more than fifty moves were found. FIDE included these endgames in the extended rule:
queen versus two bishops
queen versus two knights
two bishops versus a knight
two knights versus a pawn
rook and bishop versus a rook, and
a queen with a pawn on the seventh rank versus a queen.
The one hundred move extension was in force for a few years but it was changed to seventy-five moves in 1988 (Hooper & Whyld 1992).
Investigations in the 1980s by computer science pioneer Ken Thompson using the Belle chess computer began discovering numerous endgames winnable in more than fifty moves. However, these often involved seemingly random moves that defied human comprehension or analysis, in situations that would hardly ever occur in real gameplay. [1] In addition to being considered aesthetically displeasing, it was simply far beyond the capabilities of even the best human players to find a sequence of hundreds of perfect moves in a row without any known strategy. In 1992 the rule was changed back to fifty moves for all positions.
just had a question, if your opponent only has his king left in play how many moves does he need to make before the game is considered a draw?