David Sedgwick wrote:Alex McFarlane wrote an excellent article about this sort of issue in the November British Chess Magazine. For copyright reasons I'd better not quote from it here.
I didn't think his examples were particularly well chosen. In one of them, he had a position with a Black King on h5, a Black pawn on h4, a Black Bishop on d6 and a solitary White king on f2. I'm sure many players would feel insulted to be asked to play on as White. Perhaps he's saying that you shouldn't assume arbiters have any chess knowledge whatsoever and therefore you need to window-dress the position by parking the king on h1 before making the draw claim.
In his next example, the position is more complex. There are Black pawns on a4,b3,c4,d5,e6,f7,g6,h5. The White chain runs a3,b2,c3,d4,e5,f4,g5,h4. The White king is on e3 and the Black king on e7. White being a piece up has a Knight on g3 and a Bishop on e2. Black has a Knight on c6. For what it's worth, I would think White has a winning game with the threat of a piece for two pawns sacrifice on h5. It's suggested that because Black has the possible cheapo idea of Na7 to b5 x a3 giving a passed b pawn that the draw shouldn't be awarded. To my mind this is tantamount to adjudicating the 10.2 position, which is something arbiters seem very much against.
A third example was KRB v KR which we've seen a lot of recently. I suspect that the defender should be awarded a loss unless someone has counted lots of moves. I suppose if you had a move count and you checked the theory status of the final position (again something arbiters don't like doing), then you could award a draw provided move count plus distance to mate exceeded fifty.
Most of the article is discussing what should happen with no arbiter present. The practical advice, not given in the article, is to do what Leonard Barden suggested with regard to adjudication, which is that you aim to set up a position which looks impressive. So you claim in the wrong rook pawn ending with the King on g2 or h1.
In both cases, the player with the Black pieces would realistically only have been able to win on time if the players have any minimal skill level. Perhaps it all hinges on what normal means as in the opponent cannot win by
normal means. Personally I don't think a totally drawn or almost lost position is one that can be won
normally.