What's the greatest number of moves that could ever be achieved in a chess game?
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Battlehammer wrote:
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.
wow
coooooool
Great!
Now back to the question:
Start with moving the knights around the board. After 49.5 moves, move a pawn. If you keep continuing at one stage you'll face problems. So, you have to sacrifice pieces at specific files at specific times to make it work. At the end the game will be 5948 moves. Maybe 5949. I don't have the time to post a diagram, but I did once at my home play a game that long.
49.5 moves?
Yes. You will have to alternate between white and black, so alternate between 49 and 49.5 moves. If you get to 50 moves, it'll be a draw.
Since the 50 move rule is based upon a capture or pawn move, then your upper bound is 16*6 pawn moves plus 30 captures or 126 events which interrupt the 50 move rule.
So, 49.5 * 286 = 6,237 moves.
Again, this is an upper bound. I doubt you can get 96 pawn moves in a game without capturing at the same time, so the number will be far lower.
Looking at how many pawn moves, lets say we allow a pawn to advance to the 6th rank. It is then captured on the 49.5'th move. Then the opposition pawns are free to move. This takes us to an average of 5 moves per pawn.
116 events at 49.5 per event = 5,742.
Apologies if I duplicated anyone's math, but it is fun to work through these things without looking at anyone else's work :)
5948 or 5949 moves. Worthy of period.
Interesting, 5,949 according to chess-poster.com and Muhammad.
5870.5 according to http://www.chess.com/blog/kurtgodden/the-longest-possible-chess-game
5742 by my calcs, but I see that by strategically using pawn captures of pieces you can eek out a few more 49.5 move blocks.
Bonus points if anyone who is in the 5949 camp can post a model game.
darn maths hehe
Feb 25, 2015
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#31
Feb 25, 2015
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#32
Taking into account 9.6b of the FIDE Laws of Chess, it's 8848. This rule is in place since 1 July 2014, making previous calculations obsolete.
now did you achieve such a quantity?
*how
And how does rule 9.6b change the matter?
Feb 26, 2015
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#35
Am I blind? I don't see a 9.6b
http://www.fide.com/component/handbook/?id=124&view=article
It's 5898. If you go read through the first of my references above, you will understand and then agree.
Feb 26, 2015
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#37
ozzie_c_cobblepot wrote:
Am I blind? I don't see a 9.6b
http://www.fide.com/component/handbook/?id=124&view=article
It's 5898. If you go read through the first of my references above, you will understand and then agree.
Have you missed the red type on top of that page? Here's a better link:
http://www.fide.com/component/handbook/?id=171&view=article
I don't doubt the correctness of the calculation. Sonny_E explained it remarkably well in his comment to the blog you linked. The calculation is just obsolete.
Feb 27, 2015
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#38
Tatzelwurm wrote:
ozzie_c_cobblepot wrote:
Am I blind? I don't see a 9.6b
http://www.fide.com/component/handbook/?id=124&view=article
It's 5898. If you go read through the first of my references above, you will understand and then agree.
Have you missed the red type on top of that page? Here's a better link:
http://www.fide.com/component/handbook/?id=171&view=article
I don't doubt the correctness of the calculation. Sonny_E explained it remarkably well in his comment to the blog you linked. The calculation is just obsolete.
Thank you for the link. I did indeed miss the red type on top of the page. So for the purposes of this discussion, how are we to reconcile rule 5.2e with rule 9.6b?
If we read the question literally, then the greatest number of moves that could ever be achieved would have to be in a FIDE tournament, which would use the "Competition Rules" subsection. If the 8848 number is derived from these new rules, is there a link showing the work of how to get to that number?
If we use the "Basic Rules of Play", then I'm guessing that the 5898 number would stand, though I haven't double-checked all of the assumptions made to get to that number with the rules in that section.
Feb 27, 2015
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#39
Rule 5.2e: "The game may be drawn if each player has made at least the last 50 moves without the movement of any pawn and without any capture (see Article 9.3)." There is nothing normative in the wording of this rule.
The 50 moves rule is at the players' discretion. So it doesn't limit the maximum number of moves in a chess game because both players are free not to claim a 50 moves draw. Previous calculations answered the question "How many moves can be played in a chess game at most, if both players were to claim a 50 moves draw at the first opportunity?". The correct answer to this question is indeed 5898.
The new rule 9.6b (the 75 moves rule), however, is compulsory and sets a hard limit. So the real answer to the question at hand becomes possible.
The math is simple: replace the factor 50 in the old calculation (which comes from the 50 moves rule) with 75, and you get:
(96 + 22) * 75 - 2 = 8848
96 is the number of pawn moves, including 8 captures and 16 pawn promotions.
22 is the number of the remaining captures.
The factor 75 comes from the new 75 moves rule.
2 is the number of moves we lose due to "switching the colour" four times.