Issues on the Chess Table : Short Draws
From Mark Weeks,
Your Guide to Chess
A Typical Scenario
The last round of the Super Grandmaster chess tournament has started, the playing hall is packed with spectators, and everyone is watching the games with great interest on the large monitors. The main sponsor’s Marketing V.P. has stopped by to see what the firm, a well known, multinational, high-technology star, is getting for its scarce promotional funds, and to discuss funding next year’s event with the tournament organizer.
Twenty minutes into the round, a player stops the clock at one of the tables; both players shake hands, stand up, and walk off. The spectators get excited, ‘What just happened? Did one of the players overlook a mate in one like Kramnik in his 2006 match against Deep Fritz?’ No, the monitor shows a complicated position, pieces attacking and defending everywhere on the board. Then at another table, the players follow the same ritual: stop clocks, shake hands, leave. The same happens at another table, then another.
Finally, there is only one game left. The lowest rated player in the event, a local hero, is already in a difficult position, battling for a draw against a world top-10 player. He sinks into long thought for half an hour. With only one game to watch and nothing happening, most of the spectators leave quietly. The Marketing V.P. checks his watch, remembers another sponsorship opportunity with a tennis organizer, and leaves quickly.
Real story or fiction? With the exception of the sponsor, it’s a real story that happens every year in top chess tournaments.
Click here to read the entire article.
Just change the scoring system: 0 for a loss, 1 for a draw and n > 2 for a win (with n larger, the more you wish to discourage draws).
g
Tournaments should only have a single representative from each country.. that way, prearranged draws could be minimized.
Recent analysis of match results show that Fischer was correct in his accusation of draw fixing.
how appropriate, like what has been displayed by najer in moscow open’s last round.
Who cares?
Nice write up. My position is unchanged. The problem is simple. The Draw. The solution is simple. NO Draws.
It is very easy to change the rules of chess so that the draw disappears. This is the ONLY way to get rid of the problem of draws.
People play within the rules. So long as the draw is allowed, people will use the rules allowing draws to make draws. Thus the problem will never be solved as long as draws are allowed.
My take on draws is that it comes from the ego. Well I can win the game even if I give you these advantages. The draw is one advantage given to the weaker opponent. The stronger opponent could still win.
Today players have a rating system. We know that if a 2000 player sits down with a 1000 player who will win the game. A few hundred years ago the stronger player had to entice the weaker player to play and for money stakes. That is no longer true.
Today we have 2000 elo players player other 2000 elo players. We need to make the games decisive. We need to get back to the original concept that we are playing the game so as to produce a winner and a loser.
How to do the easy step. How to change the rules. Well there are some options but as long as both players play with the same rules from the beginning they should be fair. So pick what you want and that should work. In general it is easy to start with some simple concepts like the draw is outlawed. Therefore there are some obvious changes. The king is forced to move into check and lose. no stalemate.
I propose no repetition of moves or you lose. Lets say you lose on the 3rd or 4th move of the repetition. Thus you are forced to make a different move. If players go to simple king and king position then the last one to have a piece is the winner. Game ends one move before the king and king positon happens. Obviously one player has a piece just before that.
It really is totally fair as long as both players start with the same rules. The trick is that there will be changes in strategy in the game. That is ok. It will make for a more interesting game if everything is not so well worked out.
Let’s look at the Kramnik blunder of mate in one against the computer. Was that really such a superior way to lose? All loses are unfortunate in some way. Look at the Patriots against the Colts. They were winning 21 to 3 and eventually lost the game. Was that so nice. Sure the fans love the contest. So many football games end in the last few seconds from a 3 point kick. Everything is on the kick. miss the kick and lose the entire game. Make the kick and win. NO DRAWS ON THE KICK. or if they get to a draw then they go to sudden death to determine the winner.
I say the one and only solution to draws is to end all draws. It is impossible to find a solution where draws are allowed.
Eliminating all draws will be a great thing for chess. Matches will become best of odd number of games just like in the world series. Sponsors love that.
And fighting spirit for sure. Once you sit down and play there is no escape. You fight to win or you lose. If you dont like that go and play some other game like the present baby game of chess with draws. It is rediculous to pay people big money to play for draws. haha.
Everyone tells me I am crazy or 100 years ahead of my time. For sure we have to surrender to the truth that the draw is very bad for chess. End all Draws is the only solutions.
I see nothing wrong with this. The rules of chess have changed before. There have been even more drastic changes to the rules in the past. The rules making the queen so powerful and the moves of the other pieces etc. all big changes. The time has come for the next big change in the rules.
Why not test it out. We need to start by having a tournament with these new rules. Lets see what happens. I guarantee the entire tournament there will be fighting chess with no draws in every game. You sit down to play you either fight to win or you lose. No mickey mouse draws allowed.
I’ve despised draws from the moment I learned to play chess.
Without draws, will there then be pre-arranged wins & losses to compensate?!
Some commentators seem to confuse chess with the sort of entertainment once shown at Circus Maximus. Change to another sport (football, werestling, etc.), chess is a refined game for intelligent people, nothing for you.
I’m also wondering what tournaments this Weeks refers to. I don’t remember any recent super tournament where his scenario happend.
I do not agree.No simple solutions.
Draws are ok,sometimes you must to fight a lot for just draw…but we have a problem if there are a lot…then What can we do?
I suggest a new scoring:
3 points per victory
1 point per draw
0 points per lost game
The sofia rule is not a way to put an end to draw…
GM can always play an opening leading to a dead draw quickly…
It ony leads to losing time like the topalov and radjabov game in corus in that point.
The “poor competition ethic” is a problem that Chess definitely needs to address. In this day and age when the public attention is drawn in many different directions, including some very competitive sporting venues, Chess needs to offer its best product in order to remain relevant.
Technically, the draw cannot be eliminated from the game. It is part of it. In fact, sometimes a draw, when derived from an inferior or lost position is more dramatic than a victory…
I do not see a magic bullet to improve the competitiveness of chess, more likely a combination of changes that needs to be experimented with in order to see in a natural way what makes the best sense.
1) Organizers should gear their lists towards fighting players. MTel Masters seems like a hot venue this year.
2) Experiment with what has been tried in other sports and seems to work — awarding 3 points for victory and 1 for draw.
3) Disallow the draw offer in less than X number of moves, preferably 20.
Whatever it is, it needs to be experimented with.
D.
Flip a coin at the start of the game, the winner gets an extra Queen to replace any other piece (except King).
Stupid? Yes. But so is changing chess to eliminate a natural part of the game – the fact that sometimes two players do their best and can’t break through the other’s defenses. The position dictates a draw. To evade reality by pretending it really isn’t a draw, for the sake of pleasing sponsors, is whoring out the game for some money.
Maybe you people will be satisfied if they have a new kind of chess, called Professional Chess, which, like Professional Wrestling, is fixed so as to incite maximum drama and viewer interest. No draws there!
Oh boy there we go again…
How often have we seen all the usual ‘Draws Are Evil’ complaints? If both players play equally well – which in chess is very possible – the only logical outcome would be a draw. Anything else is simply unfair to one player.
Sofia rules, fine, but abolishing the draw is just ludicrous. For one, ALL endgame theory can be thrown out, and many of the most beautiful endgame twists – stalemate, anyone? rambling rooks? Reti’s famous study ‘White to play and draw’ to name but one – will all become worthless relics of the past.
The Draw is an essential part of chess, people. Accept it.
(In the original article, the ‘local hero’ would not be fighting for a draw, you know. He would be like the bloke that takes Roger Federer to a 5-7 7-6 7-6 but still loses. Tough luck, dude.)
Another ‘anonymous’ said, at 1:08pm…
{
“The BAP system is BS. It’s also illegal.”
}
The only problem with the above claim is that it is officially false, according to the behavior of the USCF.
The rules of BAP Chess are different than for traditional chess, in the goals and reward section of the rules.
Yet the USCF knowingly and gladly rated the BAP Chess games played in Clint Ballard’s late 2006 Slugfest event (held in Bellevue WA at Elliot Neff’s Chess4Life center).
The USCF was right to rate these BAP Chess games.
The USCF should nurture new and interesting chess initiatives, not actively or passively hinder them.
G
It might be good to have a computer recommend to the TD whether to allow a draw offer in any particular game position. The TD would be expected to accept the computer’s judgment in most cases. This would relieve the TD of the human stress of disputes with players.
And it would put players in a mindset for a full game, right from move 1.
Of course, the computer’s parameters would have to be tuned. That should be easy, given today’s databases of millions of games, to test the parameters on.
The computer could consider (a) what move-pair number the game is at (b) the amount and type of material remaining (c) the advantage evaluation (d) the sharpness of the current position, etc.
That would still leave the rule of “3 position repetitions” as a way for players to achieve a premature draw.
Outlawing the third repetition might occasionally have unpleasant theoretical implications.
Gene_M
P.S. I’m getting tired of having to enter this blog’s Word Verification code repetitively so many times.
There’s nothing wrong with draws. Quick draws are the problem. I think Nunn wrote a wonderful article on the subject;
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2729
Well, since chess is a zero-sum game, “best play” on both sides must either be a draw, a win for White, or a win for Black. At this point, we don’t know, but it seems that if the game is eventually solved, everybody will be surprised if it turns out that Black has a forced win. Personally, I’d bet on it turning out that the game of chess is a forced draw like tic-tac-toe, but it is going to take a long time to discover if this is so.
If we tinker with the rules to eliminate any possibility of draws, then that means that the game will be a forced win for one side of the other, and if the game still resembles the current chess, then probably that will be the side that moves first, White.
I don’t think it would be good if Black loses even more frequently than now because he does not have the option of “fighting for a draw”.
I also don’t believe that draws are uninteresting from a the standpoint of sporting interest. On the contrary, they mean that a game remains suspenseful even after a small mistake by one side, since it is possible for that person to fight back to a draw, and that fight can be exciting.
If you want to tinker with the rules, then I suggest that introducing a change that reduces White’s advantage would be a better. It is bigger defect of the game that Black has a fairly significant disadvantage, than there being too many draws. But increasing parity between Black and White would probably result in more draws, not less.
The problem with the game as presently played in top-level tournaments is the so-called “grandmaster draw” where players agree to draws because the tournament situation makes both players loathe to risk a loss. This isn’t cheating exactly but it is disappointing for the spectators, organizers , and sponsors. The two players are essentially agreeing that their results in the tournament will be determined by how each of them fair against everybody else and that the game between them will not be a factor in the tournament outcome.
It is hard to say when “tournament strategy” crosses the line and becomes cheating.
The spectators want the players to try to win every game, and they don’t want the outcomes of tournaments to be determined by the “tournament strategies” of the players, especially when everybody suspects that who-is-friends-with-who plays a big part in “tournament strategy”.
Chess has had this problem for a long time. As was pointed out, Fischer complained about the Soviet players working as a team by giving each other easy draws and going all out against him. He had a point.
Personally, I think it is reasonable to try the “Sofia” or “Corsican” rules before going on to anything more drastic. If top players don’t get the message and still produce draws by exchanging dow n to lifeless endgames, or by repeating the positions, then more drastic steps will be required, such as arbiters requiring players to play games over or forfeiting them from tournaments.
The problem is due in part also to the way tournaments are organized.
A tournament is effectively a higher-level game, and the prizes are awarded for winning the higher-level game, not for winning individual games.
When playing against a top-level player of comparable strength, another top-level player can obtain a chance of winning only by assuming a risk of losing. Or, one can play for a draw, minimizing both the risk of losing and the chances of winning.
To win the tournament a player may estimate that he needs so many wins, overall. He will figure out in which games he can maximize his chances of a win while assuming the smallest risk of a loss. In those games he plays for a win. In other games, where his risk of losing is too great if he plays for a win, he will play for a draw. An extreme example of this is Kramnik, who has the reputation of playing for a draw as Black, and only ever attempting to win in high-level tournaments when he has White. In fact, he ends up not being as good a tournament player as he is a match player because he refuses to take the number of risks required to win a top-level tournament.
What colors a player has against whom, the sequence of the games, including when he will expose novelties that he may have prepared, and subjective factors such as how good a “form” he feels he is in: these are other factors that enter into a player’s tournament planning.
When two players meet, both of them will have gone through these calculations. If both have decided that a draw in the game is satisfactory and fits with their tournament plan, it won’t be surprising if they agree to an early, pacific draw.
If you add to all these legitimate considerations, somewhat sleazy factors, such as who are the player’s friends, who has helped him in previous tournaments, and is likely to be of help in future tournaments, then the tournament “meta-game” becomes exceeding complex.
The spectators don’t want to see draws in the individual games, but for the players each game is just one move in a higher-level and very complex game.
If organizers and sponsors don’t want players to operate this way, then they have to come up with tournament formats, that don’t allow this kind of planning, such as elimination tournaments.
White wins: 3-1
Blak wins: 1-4
Draw less than 30 plays:0-0
Draw between 31-50 plays:0.5-0.5
Draw more than 50 plays:1-1
I know there will be a Tsunami against this but think about first.
If there is winner you give more for black and you give the opponnent some reward.. if it is a draw you reward a little bit the effort…
Some statistics from the last year’s National Championship (I will not say which country): it was round robin tournament with 12 players and 36 of 66 games was drawn:
40 moves or more: 5 games
31-40 moves: 3 games
21-30 moves: 2 games
11-20 moves: 9 games
10 moves or less: 17 games
This is the ”winner” played in 1st round: 1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nf3 d5 4.exd5 Qxd5 draw.
The sponsors should get out of Chess as well as the fans. The game was never meant for these types of people. Chess is a conflict between 2 people only and if the people agree they can cease the conflict for a day after 20 moves. Screw the sponsors!!!
The same problem had football in Europa 15-20 years ago-too many unspectacular(oft prearranged) draws.The result was:no more audience.The solution-very simple: 1 pt. for a draw,3 pts. for win.
People should make a distinction between draws and short draws – Draws are a natural consequence of the game. Short draws are not – hence the ‘Sofia rule’ should be applied to safeguard the game at least.
Fighting Draws are a part of chess, and is the result of two armies going to war and none being the victor in the field of battle.
To CHANGE the rules to avoid this, like that VERY LONG winded post above suggests, is insane.
Some ‘points’ – rantings I would label them as – from that post:
“The king is forced to move into check and lose. no stalemate.”
That is simply insane and against the rules.
“I propose no repetition of moves or you lose.”
Another insane ranting. You are forcing a player to make a sub-optimal move in *some* positions. Here, I believe an arbiter could rule on the veracity of the repetition. And, after a set # of moves (40 perhaps), it would be totally legal to do so.
“If players go to simple king and king position then the last one to have a piece is the winner.”
You can’t possible have played competive chess because if you have, you’d realize how ridiculous this suggestion is. Insane rantings once again.
“It really is totally fair as long as both players start with the same rules. The trick is that there will be changes in strategy in the game. That is ok. It will make for a more interesting game if everything is not so well worked out.”
This has the side effect of making the current ratings of ALL PLAYERS invalid. If you are a Topalov fan, I’m sure that will not sit well with you.
“Look at the Patriots against the Colts. They were winning 21 to 3 and eventually lost the game.”
Different game, different scoring system. Why not give points in chess for captured pieces then? How many times have we seen ‘balanced’ yet materially uneven positions agreed to a draw after 60 moves? Give the side that has the higher point value the win? That means even if a R vs B+P is a DEAD DRAW, the Rook wins?…of course, even intrinsic value of the pieces is contestable, so where does it end? More insane rantings….
“Everyone tells me I am crazy or 100 years ahead of my time.”
Crazy – yes. 100 years Ahead of your time – RESOUNDING NO.
You need a historical view of chess. The rule changes in the past – you gave the Queen move as your shining example – took place *a long time ago*. The game has been virtually unchanged since then. Why? BECAUSE IT IS NOT BROKEN.
The problem is *solvable* within the framework of the current rules.
I truly believe that the Sofia Anti-Draw rules are a huge step in avoiding the classic GM draw that is the scourge of chess today.
Some thought is required to do something about the threefold repetition draw before the 40-move mark, but that is something that is definitely workable in my view, and in the case of high-level round robin events, or any *professional* chess event, the binding decision of an arbiter would go a long way to resolving any problems here.
Don’t change the rules. Ban the GM draw before a set number of moves. That is where the problem is, and always has, been.
There is a position in the Slav, I believe, that can be reached where White snaps up the b-pawn and black has nothing better than to force a threefold repetition by attacking the pseudo-trapped queen between the c and a-files. This all happens before the 20th move. You cannot *force* white to make a sub-optimal move, as that would result in the loss of material and the game. Do you force black *not* to enter that line?
How would one avoid such a case between two players who want to draw? At the highest levels of chess, this move sequence is well known.
That’s just one example of how to circumvent threefold repetition anti-draw rule…
Snack-food for thought!~
I don’t think it would be a disaster simply to make it illegal to repeat a position. Other games in the chess family have such a rule. Chinese chess doesn’t allow repetitions, if I recall correctly.
The consequence of such a rule change would be, yes, that some opening lines that previously were draws would become losses because the possibility for one side to force a repetition would be gone. So what? Back to the drawing board on some opening lines. No big deal.
The rules have changed before, and this wouldn’t be such a major change. Some rules such as stalemate and en passant pawn captures didn’t become universal until the nineteenth century.
Having said all that, I don’t think this change is necessary yet. Lets have some more trials of the Sofia or Corsican rules before making radical changes to the laws of chess.
Also, GM draws are the by-product of round-robin tournaments and matches You don’t find them so much in Swiss tournaments, except in the final round. If we can’t stop GM draws in RR tournaments simply by prohibiting draw by agreement, then I would favor simply abandoning RR tournaments and using some other more exciting format.
If the sponsor shows up only for the last round, then he or she missed most of the tournament. Chess sponsors need to be told that last round results (e.g. draws) are the consequence of tough play in the first N rounds.
Tell the sponsor to show up for the penultimate round and I guarantee that they will see lots of exciting chess.
Michael Aigner
P.S. If you watched only the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl yesterday, you may never want to watch another football game again. Why did the Colts play so conservatively at the end? Because that was the safest way to win. The most exciting action came in the first quarter.