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by bitshiftfaced 49 days ago
It's kind of an illusion when you think about it. "Whose turn it is" is an inseparable part of the game state. If any move makes the game state worse this turn, then the game state was already bad before this turn.
2 comments

You can infer the game state from way before a zugzwang is played out on the board, and if you're on the losing side of the eventual zugzwang, it's normal to resign.

But if you were allowed to pass your turn, and both players see the draw coming because of a forced repetition, they'll just call it a draw before it even plays out. So the game would play out differently from the same position, if that rule existed. Essentially changing the way you would evaluate any given position.

It's not necessarily an illusion. If chess is solved and it turns out white wins with perfect play, black's first move is zugzwang.
Source? Because I'm pretty sure it's not closed and Wikipedia seems to agree with me:

"No complete solution for chess in either of the two senses is known, nor is it expected that chess will be solved in the near future (if ever)".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess

If chess is solved and white wins, black is always in Zugzwang. We might not know.