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The shortest number of moves that a game of chess can have is 2, as far as I know:

  • White moves pawn from f2 to f3, black moves pawn from e7 to e5
  • White moves pawn from g2 to g4, black moves queen from d8 to h4. Checkmate.

Which results in this situation: End game

There might be more games which end after 2 rounds, but as far as I know there is no game with fewer rounds / moves.

How many moves do the longest games take?

I thought I have read that the number is about 8000 moves.

A finite maximum number exists, because of the fifty-move rule and threefold repetition and I assume that players claim draw by those rules if possible.

Please link also to the source of your information!


edit: Jacob Schlather mentioned a blogpost with this information

[...] The Belgrade Marathon was a contest between Ivan Nicolic and Goran Arsovic that lasted over 20 hours and ended in a draw after 269 moves due to the so-called “50 Move Rule”, [...]

Source: The Longest Possible Chess Game

So the longest game that was actually played took at least 269 moves. Later he explains how he comes to 5,870 possible chess moves.

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    There's some pretty good work on this [blogpost](http://blog.chess.com/kurtgodden/the-longest-possible-chess-game) with a further discussion in the comments. There seems to be some contention based on what exactly 50 move rule you pick. It seems to around 5950 or 5900 or 5850...2012-09-11

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