Player White and Player Black are playing a game. A position occurs three times, which black notices (it does not have to be consecutive to my knowledge) but white does not. Black is worse on the board but continues to play hoping white makes a blunder. They play 25-30 more moves all the way to the endgame and White is left with King, Rook, Knight, Pawn. Black is left with King and Pawn. Black suddenly says “I claim draw by position occurring three times,” For the sake of this post, assume it did actually occur 25-30 moves ago. The question really is, can black claim this draw much later? Is this valid?
No, Black can’t claim a draw because of something that happened earlier in the game. By playing on he gave up the opportunity of claiming a draw by repetition.
yes, correct. It is a common misconception that it must be three consectutive. This happened to me this weekend. No, we were not keeping score, sudden death, below 5 mins.
I finallly kept a partial score, enough to show the rep. The only
way to claim is to claim when you intend to make a move that
repeats three times
Don’t forget that the same player must be on move for each repetition, and all possible moves (including castling and en passant) must be the same for each repetition.
(I’ve seen this requirement trip up both players and TDs.)
You can’t. So if the three occurences of the position do not all have all possible moves (for example, one prior to castling and two after) then they are not really repetitions of the same position (the position before castling is different from the position after castling even if all pieces of both colors are on the exact same squares with the same person to move).
To give a completely made-up example: Consider the following sequence of moves: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Be2 Be7 4. Kf1 Kf8 5. Ke1 Ke8 6. Kf1 Kf8. 7. Ke1. Black now records the move 7. … Ke8 on his scoresheet, stops the clock, summons the TD, and claims a draw by triple occurrence of position. While executing the move 7. … Ke8 would indeed cause the same physical position on the board for the third time, the draw claim is incorrect. On white’s fourth move, he had the option of playing 4. O-O (the king had not yet lost its castling rights), so the legal moves on White’s fourth and sixth moves (and on White’s eighth move, after 7. … Ke8) are not the same.
Now, suppose the game goes 1. e4 e5 2. Ke2 Ke7 3. Ke1 Ke8 4. Ke2 Ke7 5. Ke1. Black now records 5. … Ke8 and claims a draw by triple occurrence under rule 14C. Is the claim correct?
(Edited to correct error in notation from “1. e2 e4” to “1. e4 e5”)
No, because after white’s first move, black could still castle. The position with castling precluded has only occurred twice. once after black’s third move, and once after black’s fifth move.
I found it interesting because a lot of the chess sites generally go by some form of the rules.
On chess.com for instance once a position has happened 3 times, in online play at least, you can claim in anytime many moves later.
I don’t play much Online Chess (the quasi correspondence version), but I know for sure that Chess.com applies the rule correctly in Live Chess. You cannot claim a draw by repetition later on, when the position is different.
Assuming this were black’s record of moves, I would first have to consider whether to disallow the claim under Rule 14C9. Black’s scoresheet indicates that on his first move, white moved a pawn to e2, but then claims that on the next move white moved his king to that same square! And “1. e2 e4” is obviously not even a possible move for either player. If white’s pawn were really on e4 and black’s pawn were really on e5, this might mean that the first move was really 1. e4 e5, but there is also the possibility that the first move was really 1. e3 e6 and that the pawns were moved to e4 and e5 on a subsequent move. Of course, white’s scoresheet might correctly indicate what really happened, but Rule 14C9 indicates that the claimant’s scoresheet must be adequate to demonstrate the validity of the claim.
If the first move actually read “1. e4 e5” on black’s scoresheet, it appears to me that the claim should still be rejected, since between move 1 and move 3, both white and black have gone from having castling temporarily disallowed (due to the blocked squares) to having it permanently disallowed, which would seem to me to be a change in the right to castle.
That’s not correct. You don’t have the right to castle because there are pieces in the way in each position. Whether the King could (at some point) still castle isn’t relevant to the rule since it’s just the three occurrences in the claim that matter. And in those, the possible moves are the same for each player.
Actually, I’m hoping there will be some good discussion of this issue in this thread. I think the rule is unclear.
For reference, here is the full text of rule 14C:
The casting rules referenced by 14C (omitting the “see also” cross-references) are:
Now, I think the crucial question is what the phrase “including the right to castle” means in rule 14C. While it is true that the set of legal moves in each case (after 1. … e5, 3. … Ke8, and 5. … Ke8) is the same, there has been a change in the right to castle. After 1. … e5, castling is temporarily disallowed by rule 8A4. After 2. … Ke7, both White and Black have permanently lost the right to castle by rule 8A3. Does the change from being temporarily prevented from castling to being permanently prevented from castling make the positions different for the purposes of rule 14C?
I think the intent is that the positions are different, but I’d be more comfortable if this were made explicit. The FIDE Laws of Chess handle this case explicitly in article 9.2:
FIDE explicitly disallows the draw claim after 5. … Ke8.
I agree the FIDE rule is more clear. However, since 14C has a reference to 8A3 then I would also say the USCF rule states the same thing, just in a less obvious manner.
That’s never been the way that I’ve interpreted the USCF rule, but OTOH, the point of the rule is to allow a draw claim if neither player seems to be making “progress” and removing (permanently) a player’s right to castle can be construed as progress. Of course, I doubt it comes up very often in situations where the repetition isn’t forced anyway so you probably end up with the draw after another go at it.