South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Chess: A Knight’s Tour: Draws threaten chess success
February 17, 2008
The great draw debate: Chess spectators “gather” online in the thousands to watch their favorite stars in action. They see live and recorded videos from the playing sites while listening to color commentary from famous grandmasters (GMs). They follow move-by-move as their heroes do battle, and they discuss the tactics and strategies they imagine are being employed.
They also engage in an important ongoing debate about the negative impact of drawn games and what to do about them.
With chess becoming more of a spectator sport and attracting advertising and serious sponsors, it is possible for professionals to make a real living and for top champions to become millionaires.
Quick agreed-upon draws threaten this Camelot. Baseball has extra innings, football has overtime, and tennis has sudden death. Imagine if the Super Bowl, the World Series or Wimbledon were to end in ties or if the preliminary games were to be drawn. Even worse, imagine if both sides agreed to early draws before a real contest occurred.
Presto, no spectators; presto, no sponsors; presto, no money. Currently, a majority of games played in top events are drawn. One of the strongest tournaments ever played was just completed in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands.
Containing most of the top-10 GMs, including world champion Viswanathan Anand and his predecessors, Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov, the competition nevertheless saw only 31 decisive encounters with 60 draws. Almost half of the draws were in less than 30 moves.
In the end, teen wonder Magnus Carlsen (17) tied for first with World Cup champion Lev Aronian with, sadly, no playoff for the title.
Here is the full story.
Draw will destroy the popularity of chess. We need to eliminate short draws.
This is very easy to solve–do what they do in hockey and soccer etc.: three points for a win, one for a draw. Whatever the game, human psychology is the same!
anon 8:17 wrote
{
“will destroy”
}
There is no “will” about it. Already has destroyed.
Chess news used to be routinely reported into the 1900’s.
The excessively high draw rate in elite grandmaster chess (63% in recent title matches and tournaments) destroys the exciting “narrative” ( Mig’s well-chosen term) that would otherwise be provided to the media and fans by decisive games.
– – – – –
sylvia 12:50 wrote
{
“This is very easy to solve … three points for a win”
}
Too many flaws in this off-the-board option to rehash them all.
– – – – –
The problem is not short unfought draws. Short unfought draws are merely an artifact of the true underlying problem; namely the inherently high draw rate of traditional chess (at the elite grandmaster level).
Most short draws would end in a long draw anyway.
Without an on-the-board rule change, the high draw rate problem is completely unsolvable. It can never ever be fixed.
But with the right on-the-board rule change…
Unfortunately, FRC-chess960 by itself would lower the draw rate from 63% down to only about 50% (far from the goal of 20%-25%).
GeneM
CastleLong.com , for FRC-chess960