[Retros] 50-moves draw revisited

[Rol, Guus]

Hi Tom, Joost,
 
Irreversible change never was the idea behind article 5, whatever we may
have been told. The move Ke1-d2 causes as much irreversible change as
0-0 - loss of future castling right - and yet it was not included in the
rule. The reason for this, as I set out in my comment, is that every
effort was directed at including or excluding "moves with certain
properties" instead of looking at the properties of the overall board
position.
 
The idea of irreversible change is untenable anyway. There are ways in
which black and white can get themselves into irreversible knots without
involving pawn moves or captures. And that is only the practical side of
it. (Ir)reversability as a useful concept has nothing to do with a
50-moves rule though it might have something to do with a
539103004971646-moves rule. For one, the reversibility of singular moves
bears no relation to the progress of the complete game, whereas the
reversibility of positions could only become relevant if it somehow
indicated that much of the terrain had been been covered. We've tried it
all, so now we sadly return to the point of origin. We definitely need a
lot more than 50 moves before we can enter that brand of "reversibility"
into our considerations.
 
The 50-moves concept and the 50-moves rule always were highly
superficial entities based on "appearances". The position looks like
"nothing much has changed"; yes, your bishop is on h8 now, but did you
need 50 moves for that? The use of "irreversible moves" was only a handy
tool for codifying the idea. Quite successful until someone lost the
plot when he added "castling". The rest is in my original comment.
 
The most remarkable side of this issue is that the correct approach was
already available in the FIDE/Codex, the repetion rule. From the
insightful understanding that "essential progress" should be read from
positions and not from reversible or reversed moves, it was decided to
base the rule on the repetition of positions and not of moves! From this
highly commendable example I now rate article 5 in the same category as
I rate chess players who still believe in "move repetitions".
 
Guus Rol.
 

	It is the case that after a capture or a pawn move the board
array can never be restored by valid chess moves to any position that
existed prior to that capture or pawn move, which seems to be a
perfectly reasonable way to measure "progress" in an over-the-board
game. 
	
	It is also the case that in certain positions if a player
castles the board arrary can never be restored by valid chess moves to
any position that existed prior to the castling. However unlike pawn
moves and captures, the irreversibility is not necessarily the case
after every instance of castling.
	
	Whatever we like ....
	
	Tom Volet  
	 
	It was decided that "something  about castling" needed to be
conceived as "essential progress" in the game and therefore should be
incorporated in the 50-moves rule.   I doubt it was the 'essential
progress' that caused this to be added to the 50 move rule. It has more
to do with 'irreversible change of the position'.

	Joost

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