Are there any limit to the total amount of possible moves before stalemate or checkmate in chess? If so, what is it and how do one prove that?
EDIT: As I wrote in a comment below,
stalemate is the position when the player to move has no legal move and is not in check. According to the most common rules, draw also happens when the last fifty successive moves made by both players contain no capture or pawn move.
I hope this provides enough information in order to answer my question.
This depends on how you play... There is a 50-move rule in most tournament chess where either player can CLAIM a draw if 50 moves have happened without a pawn move or a capture. Granted, they don't have to claim the draw, so technically it could go on forever. If you impose that a game is automatically drawn if it violates the 50 move rule... then IIRC there is a maximum of 5948 moves.(To understand 5950, count how many captures and pawn moves can possibly happen... keeping in mind that certain pawn moves will ALSO have to be captures to allow for more pawn moves... it takes a bit more thinking to realize why you get two less than that.)