Enter Your Reply The Comment You're Replying To Michael Nelson wrote on Wed, Sep 24, 2003 03:33 PM UTC:I believe that mate with King, Bishop and Knight vs lone King can take up to 49 moves, which is the reason for the 50-move rule. IIRC, computer studies of more complex positions have shown mates requiring over 200 moves--which might or might not transgress the fifty move rule, as any capture or pawn move resets the clock. But in any case, the line has to be drawn somewhere and some wins (if arbitrary length games are allowed) will be draws under an x-move rule. I believe the 50-move limit should be increased for a larger board, but reduced for more powerful pieces (for the board size). The technical way would be to calculate the average crowded board mobitity of each piece (using Betza's method), then add up these values to get an approximation of the power on the board. Compare the ratio of this power to the number of squares to the ratio of the FIDE army (about 64, depending on the magic number) to 64 squares = about 1. The formula is movelimit = 50 times board size divided by total army mobility. For FIDE Chess this is 50 * 64 / 64 = 50. To examples for your duodecimal game: 1. Total army mobility = 90 50 * 144 / 90 = 80 2. Total army mobility = 200 50 * 144 / 200 = 36 You can probably guesstimate accurately enough without actually doing the calculations. Edit Form You may not post a new comment, because ItemID 50 moves rule does not match any item.