In the game of chess, perpetual check is a situation in which one player can force a draw by an unending series of checks. Such a situation typically arises when the player who is checking cannot deliver checkmate; while failing to continue the series of checks gives the opponent at least a chance to win. A draw by perpetual check is no longer one of the rules of chess. However, such a situation will eventually result in a draw by either threefold repetition or the fifty-move rule, but usually players agree to a draw (Burgess 2000:478).
Perpetual check can also occur in other chess variants, although the rules relating to it may be different. For example, giving perpetual check is not allowed (an automatic loss for the giver) in both shogi and xiangqi.
Famous quotes containing the words perpetual and/or check:
“This perpetual round of constrained civilities to persons quite indifferent to us, is the most provoking and tiresome thing in the world, but it is unavoidable in a country town, where everybody is known.... ‘Tis a most shocking and unworthy way of spending our precious irrecoverable time, to those who know not its value.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“The formation of an oppositional world view is necessary for feminist struggle. This means that the world we have most intimately known, the world in which we feel “safe” ... must be radically changed. Perhaps it is the knowledge that everyone must change, not just those we label enemies or oppressors, that has so far served to check our revolutionary impulses.”
—Bell (c. 1955)