How many moves for checkmate?

So you know about chess!  What, then is the shortest checkmate available to the player with the White pieces?

Lammergier, I was thinking of 1 e4 g5? 2 d4 (or pretty much anything else) f6 (or f5)?? 3Qh5#.  Maybe I didn't make it clear that Black was helping!  I agree that internet chess is probably bad for your game.

About thirty years ago, wasn't there a game in a high-powered international tournament when Black lost to something really stupid like Fool's Mate? Don't remember any details.

Hmm, that's got me wondering about longest games - in terms of moves. I imagine some postal games might have taken many years, but I look at my score sheet and think "60 moves, phew that was a struggle" - or something similar(!). My longest game was 84 moves - difficult game of rook and pawn v bishop and pawns - what was your longest game? Do you know the longest game that took place over the board? There is probably another question here, "what is longest game that could ever take place?" You run into the 50 move rule here, I think. The game is drawn if a pawn is not moved or a piece has not been captured in the last 50 moves.

I cant quite get the 5,949 moves.
You have 6 x 8 x 49 pawn moves, then the capture of pieces every 49 moves.
Am I missing something?

Suppose White opens with 1 e3.  It is the possible for White subsequently to move two knights, a queen and a Bishop while black just moves his two knights.  So the two players merely 'play' with these pieces for the next 49 moves.  (Repetitions do not matter as a draw has to be claimed and both would have agreed not to claim!)

After White's 50th move, with the only pawn move being White's 1 e3, black plays 1...e6 and then another 50 move dance is possible with nothing being taken and no further pawn being moved until move 100.

So, with nothing being taken, after 32 (pawn moves) x 50 = 1600 all of the pawns would be facing each other on the fourth and fifth ranks.  One could then start eliminating each of the 30 (pieces and pawns) with 50 intervening moves for each, leading to a further 1500 moves.

This comes to 3100 and does not take accout of the possibility of some (possibly most of the pawns) passing each other and marching very slowly - with 50 intervening moves each time - to the eight rank and becoming queens.

It seems likely to me that a maximum of 8 pawns - e.g. 4 from each side - would be able to reach the back ranks and become queens.  At this stage I prefer to pass,  utterly denying the unspoken suggestion that the further calculation is beyond me!   BUT 5,949 does seem more feasible than I originally thought.