Perpetual Check
A repeating sequence of checks that a player cannot escape or stop, typically leading to a draw by repetition.
A weaker side sometimes uses perpetual check as a drawing resource when down significant material, forcing the opponent's king to shuffle between the same squares indefinitely.
Etymology
Perpetual is attested in English from the mid-14th century as “everlasting, unceasing.” The phenomenon it names in chess is old: the earliest example Wikipedia cites is an anonymous game of 1750, followed by Bowdler–Philidor 1788. Howard Staunton listed perpetual check as one of six ways a game could be drawn in The Chess-Player's Handbook (1847), heading a list of six causes of a drawn game. Perpetual check has since been removed from the rules as a separate drawing condition — by 1965 it was no longer listed — because such games are covered by threefold repetition or the fifty-move rule.
First documented: 1750 — Anonymous game of 1750, cited in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Chess Games, Volume 1
Translations
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