The Longest Possible Chess Game

The article itself doesn&#x27;t arrive at the correct number of 5898 moves, but some of the commenters do. At my own page <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tromp.github.io&#x2F;chess&#x2F;longest.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tromp.github.io&#x2F;chess&#x2F;longest.html</a> you can play through a 3-moves-shorter game.

A user who is banned asked in this thread why you can&#x27;t have an unlimited-length game where kings just move back and forth. The answer is<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fifty-move_rule" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fifty-move_rule</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Threefold_repetition" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Threefold_repetition</a>

I thought the 50 move rule has been lifted for a few cases where a position is known to require more moves to win.<p>However, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fide.com&#x2F;component&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;1-fide-news&#x2F;10115-fide-laws-of-chess.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fide.com&#x2F;component&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;1-fide-news&#x2F;10...</a> doesn&#x27;t mention that, and even has the in some sense stronger <i>&quot;a game is drawn if any series of at least 75 moves have been made by each player without the movement of any pawn and without any capture.&quot;</i>, which doesn&#x27;t require either player to claim the draw, and, thus, cannot be avoided.<p>So, even if the players wanted it, a game can&#x27;t be longer than somewhere around 96*75 or 7200 moves.

From 2007, for whatever that&#x27;s worth. I only noticed because the sudden mention of a &quot;PDA&quot; made me think, &quot;what year is it?!&quot;

One thing that I wondered about when looking at the longest recorded professional games that occurred in real play was at what point they reached a position that is actually solved in a tablebase. In particular, chess endgames involving only 7 pieces were explicitly solved by computer search in 2012. (But I also wonder if bringing those solutions to bear in a real game would involve ignoring the 50-move rule, since tablebase solution for these positions may often require more than 50 moves to complete.)<p>On tablebase-informed endgame theory, some of the professionals in these ultra-long games should probably have resigned long before the actual end of the games, except that they can also assume that their opponents don&#x27;t know the full solutions.

&gt;Otherwise, we have nothing further to discuss here regarding the longest possible game.<p>The 50 move rule is there to ensure that the players don&#x27;t have to occupy every possible position twice before making progress, but it is not the only possible way to put an upper bound on the game&#x27;s length. Since the position will eventually repeat, and the three repititions rule can be invoked.