Not every game of chess has a winner. At the highest level, a large share of games end in a draw, and even between beginners draws happen more often than people expect — sometimes by design, often by accident. A draw counts as half a point to each player, and in rated games it moves both ratings a little towards each other.
There are five ways a game can be drawn. The first four are declared by the rules themselves; the last is up to the players.
The player to move is not in check but has no legal move. The game ends immediately as a draw, however much material either side has.
Stalemate is the draw that most often saves a lost game, and the one that most often throws away a won one. It has its own page, with diagrams and the habit that prevents it: Check, checkmate and stalemate.
If the same position appears three times, the game is a draw. The moves in between do not have to be the same, and the repetitions do not have to come one after another. What has to match is the position itself: the same pieces on the same squares, the same player to move, and the same rights to castle and to capture en passant.
The most common way to reach it is perpetual check. A player who is losing on material finds a way to keep checking the enemy king, and the king cannot escape the checks: it goes back and forth, the checks go back and forth, and after the third repetition the game is drawn. When you are behind, always look for a perpetual. When you are ahead, look at where your king can hide before you let the opponent’s queen near it.
If fifty moves by each player go by with no capture and no pawn move, the game is a draw. The count starts again from zero every time a pawn moves or a piece is captured.
The rule exists to stop a game going on forever when neither side can make progress, and it matters most in endgames where one side is trying to give checkmate with too little. A few checkmates, such as a king with a bishop and a knight against a lone king, are possible but hard — and a player who does not know the technique can easily run out of moves before delivering mate.
If neither player could possibly give checkmate, no matter how badly the other plays, the game is a draw on the spot. This happens when the pieces left on the board are simply not enough to build a mating net:
A single rook or a single queen, by contrast, is more than enough — our lessons walk you through finishing off both. And a single pawn is never “insufficient”, because it can still promote.
One case surprises people: two knights against a lone king. Checkmate is possible, but only if the defender helps by walking into it; against sensible defence it cannot be forced. The rules still let the game go on, so in practice it usually ends by the fifty-move rule or by agreement.
Either player can offer a draw, and if the opponent accepts, the game ends there. In online games on Chess Thrill, that is the ½ Draw button: press it to offer, and when your opponent offers one, the same button lets you accept. Against the bots there is no offer to make — a bot plays every game to the end.
Tournament rules often limit agreed draws, so that players cannot shake hands before a real game has been played. Offering one out of politeness in a lost position is fine; offering one every few moves to unsettle your opponent is not.
Time adds one more rule. Normally, a player who runs out of time loses. But if the opponent has no way at all to give checkmate — only a bare king, say — then running out of time is a draw instead, because a player cannot win a game they could never have won on the board.
You never need to claim a draw. As soon as one of the first four happens — stalemate, a third repetition, the fiftieth move without a capture or pawn move, or material that cannot give mate — the game ends and is recorded as a draw by itself.
The most useful thing to take from all this is an attitude rather than a rule: a lost position is not a lost game until it is over. Before resigning, look for stalemate tricks, perpetual checks and trades that leave your opponent with too little to win. Players at every level save half-points this way every day.
Chess pieces: “cburnett” set by Colin M. L. Burnett, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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