Statement of Rule
The relevant part of the official FIDE laws of chess is rule 9.3:
The game is drawn, upon a correct claim by the player having the move, if- (a) he writes on his scoresheet, and declares to the arbiter his intention to make a move which shall result in the last 50 moves having been made by each player without the movement of any pawn and without the capture of any piece, or
- (b) the last 50 consecutive moves have been made by each player without the movement of any pawn and without the capture of any piece.
A claim does not have to be made at the first opportunity – it can be made any time when there were no captures or pawn moves in the last fifty moves.
A game is not automatically declared a draw under the fifty-move rule – the draw must be claimed by a player on his turn to move. Therefore a game can continue beyond a point where a draw could be claimed under the rule. Theoretically, a game could continue indefinitely this way; but in practice, when a draw under the fifty-move rule can be claimed, one of the players is usually happy to claim it (Hooper & Whyld 1992:134).
Games drawn under the fifty-move rule before the endgame are rare. One example is the game Filipowicz versus Smederevac, Polanica Zdrój 1966, which was drawn on move 70 without any captures having been made in the whole game and with the last pawn being moved on move 20.
Read more about this topic: Fifty-move Rule
Famous quotes containing the words statement of, statement and/or rule:
“I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)
“The first rule of education for me was discipline. Discipline is the keynote to learning. Discipline has been the great factor in my life. I discipline myself to do everything—getting up in the morning, walking, dancing, exercise. If you won’t have discipline, you won’t have a nation. We can’t have permissiveness. When someone comes in and says, “Oh, your room is so quiet,” I know I’ve been successful.”
—Rose Hoffman, U.S. public school third-grade teacher. As quoted in Working, book 8, by Studs Terkel (1973)