Does 'dead position' consider the 75 moves rule?

Question

In 5.2.2 of the FIDE laws it says:

The game is drawn when a position has arisen in which neither player can checkmate the opponent’s king with any series of legal moves. The game is said to end in a ‘dead position’.

and in 9.6.2 it says

[If one or both of the following occur(s) then the game is drawn:] any series of at least 75 moves have been made by each player without the movement of any pawn and without any capture.

In a discussion we were wondering whether these rules combine, i.e. whether a position where it is not possible for mate to occur within the 75 moves rule can be considered dead. (for 50 moves we suspect the answer is no but for 75 moves it seems less clear) I suppose the same question can also be raised for 5-fold repetition.

EDIT: Since there appears to be some confusion I will add an example which is very similar to the game that caused my question. Consider the following position after White move 74: There have not yet been 75 moves without a capture or pawn move, however, it is impossible to reach a mate position within the 75 move rule. Black loses on time. Should the position have been declared dead already?

[Variant "From Position"]
[FEN "4k3/8/8/8/8/8/8/4KBN1 w - - 0 1"]

1. Ke2 Ke7 2. Kd2 Kd7 3. Ke3 Ke7 4. Ke4 Ke8 5. Ke5 Kd8 6. Kd6 Kc8 7. Kc6 Kb8 8. Be2 Kc8 9. Bf1 Kd8 10. Be2 Ke8 11. Bf1 Kf8 12. Bg2 Kg8 13. Bf3 Kh8 14. Bg2 Kg8 15. Bf3 Kh8 16. Bg2 Kg8 17. Bf3 Kh8 18. Bg2 Kg8 19. Kd6 Kf8 20. Bf3 Kg8 21. Bg2 Kg7 22. Be4 Kf7 23. Bd3 Kg7 24. Be2 Kg8 25. Ke6 Kg7 26. Bd3 Kg8 27. Bc4 Kg7 28. Bb5 Kg8 29. Ba6 Kg7 30. Bb7 Kg8 31. Bc6 Kg7 32. Ba8 Kg8 33. Bd5 Kg7 34. Be4 Kg8 35. Bf3 Kg7 36. Bg2 Kh8 37. Kf6 Kg8 38. Bf3 Kh8 39. Be4 Kg8 40. Bd5+ Kh8 41. Bc6 Kg8 42. Bb7 Kh8 43. Ba8 Kg8 44. Bh1 Kh8 45. Bg2 Kg8 46. Bf3 Kh8 47. Be4 Kg8 48. Bd5+ Kh8 49. Bc6 Kg8 50. Bb7 Kh8 51. Nf3 Kh7 52. Nh4 Kh6 53. Ng6 Kh7 54. Bd5 Kh6 55. Ba2 Kh7 56. Bb3 Kh6 57. Bc4 Kh7 58. Bd5 Kh6 59. Be6 Kh7 60. Bf7 Kh6 61. Bg8 Kh5 62. Ne5 Kh4 63. Kf5 Kg3 64. Ng4 Kg2 65. Bc4 Kf3 66. Bf1 Kg3 67. Be2 Kh4 68. Kf4 Kh5 69. Bd3 Kh4 70. Bg6 Kh3 71. Ne3 Kh4 72. Ng2+ Kh3 73. Kf3 Kh2 74. Kf2 {Black loses on time. Should the position already have been declared dead?}

Answer 1

In section 3.10.1, the laws define what legal moves are:

3.10.1 A move is legal when all the relevant requirements of Articles 3.1 – 3.9 have been fulfilled.

The mentioned sections 3.1 to 3.9 only define how the pieces move, what check is, and that the King can't move if in check.

And in section 1.4, they define what a checkmate is, again using the term "legal moves":

1.4 The objective of each player is to place the opponent’s king ‘under attack’ in such a way that the opponent has no legal move. 1.4.1 The player who achieves this goal is said to have ‘checkmated’ the opponent’s king

Applying these definitions to the "dead position" rule:

5.2.2 The game is drawn when a position has arisen in which neither player can checkmate the opponent’s king with any series of legal moves.

It seems pretty clear that neither the 75-moves-rule nor 5-fold repetition should be considered since they don't impact the legality of moves.

This is specifically considering the FIDE Laws of Chess though. As far as I'm aware, USCF tournaments (and probably some others as well) have different rules for dead positions.

Answer 2

First, there are positions where white can force a mate but with perfect defense by black it takes more than 75 moves to do (Ant referenced this reddit post) and that do not involve captures or pawn moves. I recall a question about these kind of situations on this site as well but I can't find it right now.

If you arrive at such a position a strict reading of the rules would be as follows. 5.2.2 says 'sequence of legal moves' so it suffices that each move individually is legal, it doesn't matter how long the sequence is. It does not say 'legal sequence of moves' which could be interpreted as accounting for the 75 moves rule. Hence the game is not a dead position, the condition for a dead position is not fullfilled. So the game continues.

If both players play perfectly 75 moves later the game will be ruled a draw by rule 9.6.2. If they only play human moves other outcomes may be possible and the game may come to a dead position a few moves later.

There is no contradiction here. One could say all 9.6.2 does is allow the players to skip doing 75 moves if they can agree beforehand that it will not change the outcome anyway. In situations where it would take more than 75 moves this shortcut is not available.

Answer 3

My feeling is that it should consider the 75 move rule. The current wording strictly speaking doesn't say that, as benediktwerner's answer explains (considering it only mentions "legal moves", and the strict definition of what legal moves are does not consider the 75 move rule).

But the wording of the 75 move rule and the 5 times repetition rule use the phrase "this immediately ends the game", just like the definitions of checkmate and stalemate do. It's a final, mechanical thing.

Consider also the recent tightening up of the rules concerning draws, aimed at making it impossible to win a game that cannot be won on the board. Especially the new rule 5.1.2 -- "The game is lost by the player who declares he/she resigns (this immediately ends the game), unless the position is such that the opponent cannot checkmate the player’s king by any possible series of legal moves. In this case the result of the game is a draw." (emphasis mine). That's going quite far, that it is considered important that a drawn game can't even be won by resignation of the opponent.

Now say that 74 moves without captures and pawn moves have already been played, and in the next move it's not possible to capture anything, move a pawn, or checkmate a player. Whatever the player to move does, it's going to be a draw -- if they actually do something.

Then if either clock runs out now, it would still count as 1-0 or 0-1?

In my opinion, the spirit of the current rules is that in that situation neither player can actually win on the board anymore (the "series of legal moves" can not actually be played, because of the 75 move rule), and therefore the result of the game should be a draw. And indeed, by the dead position rule. So there wouldn't be a need to wait for a clock to fall, although in practice this won't often be noticed.

So I would claim the Preface applies:

The Laws of Chess cannot cover all possible situations that may arise during a game, nor can they regulate all administrative questions. Where cases are not precisely regulated by an Article of the Laws, it should be possible to reach a correct decision by studying analogous situations which are regulated in the Laws.

And I would consider this case to be a dead position draw.

Answer 4

Over the board, I think these FIDE rules must combine. If the count is at 73.0 since the last zeroing, and there's no checkmate, capture or pawn move possible in the next 2.0 moves, then the game is over. Since the purpose of 75M was to allow the arbiters to turn the lights out and go home, this has to be in the spirit of the Laws.

So much seems to be the consensus here, but what about the compositional world?

The Codex excludes 75M currently, and 50M applies for "retro" compositions only. A mandatory 50M behaves qualitatively like 75M, so it's worth describing - eventually problemists may embrace 75M too.

The general view of specialists is that for retro compositions, DP rule should see 50M rule. For non-retro DP problems (e.g. help-DP) we would need to switch on 50M in the stipulation. No-one's explored this area yet.

The space of endgames is substantially enriched if the game state includes the 50M count. This is true even though there maybe no reasonable way that a count of e.g. 22.5 could have been accumulated by sensible prior play. For compositions, we never presume competent play prior to the diagram position anyway. This is a computationally-challenging area for tablebases to manage, because optimal play (go for zero or mate) depends upon the precise count. Revel in Gale Huntington's ground-breaking work at http://galen.metapath.org/egtb50/

By comparison, for a help-DP problem, some cognoscenti suggest the DP rule should not have visibility of 3Rep (draw by repetition). This is because it is usually too easy to set up a position where the player to move is doomed to hit 3Rep. Such lines seem as common as weeds, and very hard to make unique. For "simplicity", should we make the same policy for 50M? Personally, I don't think we should do so in advance of actual compositions existing