Heatwave Friday

"Drawn by Repetition"

Tonight, one of the games finished as "Drawn by Repetition".  What does this mean?  In chess games always finish in either a win for black, a win for white, or a draw.  A win for either play is simple - either  a player resigns, or else someone gets Checkmate.  But with a draw, there are a number of ways that this can be achieved:

1. The players agree a draw;
2. Stalemate - this is where a player is not in check, but there is not a single legal move he can make on the board, a good example of that is shown below where it is Black to move.  You can see that the Black King is not in check, but there is no move that he can make.  If black had a single pawn (or more) and they were able to make any legal move, then this would not be stalemate.
3. Draw  by repetition - see below for more on this.

Black to Play - Stalemate

So what is "Drawn by Repetition"?  In chess there is a rule that, should the pieces come to be in the same positions across the whole of the board 3 times, then the game is automatically declared a draw.  I imagine Grandmasters are quite good at remembering positions and realise when this results in a draw.  However, at the lower levels, it is often something that players are perhaps not aware of, or very often do not realise that this has happened.  However, when playing on a website like ChessKid, the website will monitor for this and automatically award a draw if this happens.  This can be really annoying if you are winning by a mile - because it will still be a draw if the position is repeated 3 times.  I think the main thing is not to worry about it too much, unless you can spot a way to secure a draw if you need to get out of a muddle, or perhaps avoid it if you want to and have seen it coming.  The game which finished as "Drawn by Repetition" is shown below - if you have not come across this before, it might be worth clicking through and seeing how this happened.  On this occasion, a draw was certainly a very fair result.

The Results:

U1300:
Tonight MerryJazz returned to the top position to win the event for the second time - very well played.  SillyLimit took the silver medal position, also for the second time, with an excellent 3 wins from 4 games.  AbleLopsidedGiraffe and MeanCactus shared the bronze medal position with 2 wins each, both only losing to the players in the top two positions.  However, very well played to all players.  Very well played to squigglypencil for winning his first game!

1st: MerryJazz
2nd: SillyLimit
3rd equal: AbleLopsidedGiraffe & MeanCactus 

​Open:
RichSmoothPanda won the event this evening with a perfect 4 wins from 4 games.  ZanyHummingBook had an excellent evening in taking the silver medal, only losing to the eventual winner.  WiseCrabbyCoconut had his best result in the this event in taking 3rd position - well played to all three and indeed all the competitors in both of tonight's events.

1st: RichSmoothPanda
2nd: ZanyHummingBook
3rd: WiseCrabbyCoconut

If you have a ChessKid login, you can see the full results and all the games at the following links:
U1300: https://www.chesskid.com/tournament/u1300-heatwave-friday-39887/results
Open:  https://www.chesskid.com/tournament/open-heatwave-friday-39889/results