Highest no. of moves

I've been wondering: what is the highest possible no. of moves in a chess game given the 50 move rule? (If both players cooperate to prolong it as long as poss, of course) Anyone happen to know/want to try figure it out?

I know there is one, found it on a site some time ago. Let me look again...

Here we go, though I do not understand it all, it makes a bit of sense to me:

"How long is the longest possible chess game?
The basic idea is a player may claim a draw if fifty moves elapse without a capture or a pawn advance. Ignoring the special cases where more than 50 moves are allowed by the rules, the answer is after Black's 5948th move, White is able to claim a draw. The simple calculation is (<Pawn_moves + <Captures>- <Duplicates>+ <Drawing_interval_grace_period) * <Drawing_interval, or (16*6 + 30 - 8 + 1) * 50 = 5950; we're able to trim two moves from this total by observing that sequences of Captures/Pawn_moves must have (at least) 4 alternations between the two players."

PS: Found it here: http://www.drpribut.com/mwiki/index.php?title=Chess_Faq_Part_Four

Originally posted by shutupimthinking
I've been wondering: what is the highest possible no. of moves in a chess game given the 50 move rule? (If both players cooperate to prolong it as long as poss, of course) Anyone happen to know/want to try figure it out?

The 50 move rule must be claimed. Therefore if neither player claims it (they wouldn't if they wanted the longest possible game) it is infinite.

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
The 50 move rule must be claimed. Therefore if neither player claims it (they wouldn't if they wanted the longest possible game) it is infinite.

Is it...?

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
The 50 move rule must be claimed. Therefore if neither player claims it (they wouldn't if they wanted the longest possible game) it is infinite.

smartass. I'm gonna whoop you week 1.

You better show for the draft.

I forgot about the claiming thing. That led me on to thinking about the fact that the three move repitition draw also needs to be claimed but most online chess servers don't seem to reflect this. Totally irrelevant in almost all situations, I know (the notable exceptions are where the repeated positions are not consecutive and the losing player doesn't realise they had occured until after the game). There is a hilarious story in Eduard Gufeld's 'The Search for the Mona Lisa' where he tries to prolong a tournament game by insisting that his two rooks had swapped places in the intervening moves and therefore the position was not repeated!

Anyway thanks for the replies. I think after six thousand moves I would probably claim the draw regardless.