this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
697 points (96.4% liked)
Programmer Humor
32718 readers
312 users here now
Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
Rules:
- Posts must be relevant to programming, programmers, or computer science.
- No NSFW content.
- Jokes must be in good taste. No hate speech, bigotry, etc.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Stalemate is after 3 repeat moves, so no.
It's not just repeated moves, a draw can be called if the board is in the same state 3 times at all during the game; if you get to the same position 3 times using different moves that still counts, even if it was a white move the first two times and a black move the third.
The game also ends after 50 moves with no captures or pawn moves so you can't play indefinitely by just avoiding those board states. Interestingly those two moves also make it impossible to return to a previous board state (pawns can't move backwards, extra pieces are never added) so if you're enforcing both rules in code you can safely discard previous board states every time you reset the move counter.
But it’s a state machine, and you could easily contrive scenarios for infinite moves, without stalemate.