Yesterday, a lot of chess fans were upset that GM Vladimir Kramnik offered a draw on move 19 and GM Boris Gelfand immediately accepted the offer at the Dortmund super tournament in Germany. Many said that this is a serious problem and all invitational events should have the “no draw” offer rule.
I disagree. Many players do play fighting chess. There are a few who are known for short draws. There is a very simple problem to fix this.
DO NOT INVITE non-fighting players back! Why reward the non-fighting players by inviting them back again and again? Let’s reward the players who fight by giving them more invitations.
Simple, isn’t it? I am sure they will get the message very quickly. I never asked my colleagues to play fighting chess at the recent NY City Mayor’s Cup. They did it automatically. Let’s pinpoint those who make “quick draws” and let’s leave others alone.
I think yours is a simple and effective solution – let the market forces (fans and organizers) decide rather than trying to change player behavior by creating artificial rules. The same holds true for suggestions I’ve read over the years to make a draw something less than 1/2 a point to encourage fighting chess. We don’t need to alter the game itself to make a clear statement of preference for those players who give it their all.
Susan – I agree with you. As an organizer of title norm tournaments I had that problem. I implemented the ‘No draw prior to 30 moves’ rule and the amount of draws was cut down drastically. Actually a number of players known for drawing quickly found themselves in a situation where they were forced to fight.
There is no way of ensuring that the .5 does not occur – there is repetition of position, trading down to K vs K, trading down to no mating material, or placing into a stalemate. So if 2 players really want a draw they can do it.
I agree with not inviting the players back. Since there is good money involved especially in the invitational tournaments that it will teach them the lesson where it hurts most – in the pocket book.
It’s an absolute shame that a Super-GM take an early draw. But it’s up to the organizer to place the rules of the event. If they don’t want to do it then this problem will continue on.
same ol same ol…..Its sad to see Gelfand and Mr Kramnik do things like this…Its like vanilla pudding…but really …is anyone REALLY surprised?? That surprises me even more.
This wasn’t a fake, it was a disaster for GK. I guess he didn’t believe he could win anymore.
If it was staged, then why would he make it so obvious ? He could have faked that last game, couldn’t he ?
For the Gelfand-Kramnik: I would have appreciated the Sofia rules very much. Let them play till everyone sees that it’s a draw.
I like your solution to the problem. However, I believe that if they want to take a draw, we should let them. After all, it WILL come back to hurt them, whether it’s in their popularity or in the tournament standings.
It seems that draws upset fans more than organizers. Morozevich and Judith Polgar fight to the bitter end, and often their games are exciting spectacles, but they don’t get invited to as many elite tournaments. Organizers like names with the prefix “champion” attached to them. So there is no reason to feel sorry for the organizers. You don’t need to stop inviting Kramnik and Leko, just include more fighters in the invitations, and the message will be heard.
Excellent point. The no-draw rule is not the solution. Plus, it doesn’t account for situations that really are draws.
Another way to let the market forces decide is to base prize money on number of wins, instead of number of points.
Placement is still based on points (e.g. there’s no point in giving someone who won 2 out 8 games more money that someone who drew 8 out of 8 games). But prize money is no longer dependent on placement but on number of wins, and perhaps even superlinearly so that there is more and more riding on late-round wins.
So, something like 1st/2nd/3rd place gets prize money. Winnings for a 8 round tournament could go something like this:
1st place = $2k + wins prize
2nd place = $1k + wins prize
3rd place = wins prize
Wins Prize:
8 wins: $12k
7 wins: $8k
6 wins: $5k
5 wins: $3k
4 wins: $1k
In this win, contestants who settle for last round draws both suffer compare to taking risks and fighting for the win. Of course, they could still collude and ‘split the pot’ but that may be harder for the loser to stomach than a pre-agreed draw since he is then the ‘loser’ as compared to the ‘winner’.
Let’s punish those who are guilty of having “quick draws” and let’s leave others alone.
I like your Darwinist, survival of the fittest point of view, Susan. However, with that in mind chess has no chance to survive. Computer games are the fittest games. Your chess world is becoming obsolete.
Sorry, but it is the harsh truth.
A draw with black against a player of Gelfand’s caliber? Do you want Kramnik to play to win the tournament, or play to win just the game? Either way Kramnik gets kriticized. Is it a good thing to start banning all the players who have devoted their lives developing a particular style of chess? Why not modify the rules of chess: no playing 1. d4? Or 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6? Make that part of the rules. If you play that anyway then your career is just as good as dead anyway since you won’t be invited to tournaments: discourage a young kid who wants to learn the game from playing the Petroff by making it illegal to play the Petroff because he has no future if he does. Every chess set should come with an instruction manual that says you can only move pawns up two squares if they are on the second rank, you can’t castle through check, and you can’t play the Petroff. Next all of you want to ban Andy Roddick because he is boring: he just blasts everyone away with his 140 miles per hour serves. Do the young people who aspire to be Andy a favor and make it part of the rules of tennis that the ball can’t go over 140: allow those young players to develop a finesse game and not make the mistake of wasting their lives.
It’s obvious you don’t follow chess discussions around the world. Countless people spoke about this, not Susan.
” This wasn’t a fake, it was a disaster for GK. I guess he didn’t believe he could win anymore.
If it was staged, then why would he make it so obvious ? He could have faked that last game, couldn’t he ?”
Ah, to be that naive…
so what, public still will be interested in seeing draws from Kramnik, because of who he is.
Why not use the same system as they do in soccer i.e
win = 3 points
draw = 1 point
lost = 0 points
This would make players put in some extra effort and drawing less attractive.
I remember once long ago reading someone’s suggestion that a draw would only be worth 0.4 or 0.45 points to each player, or 0.45 to white and 0.55 to black.
An adaptation of the idea would be to give 0.4 points in a given round to players who draw, and divide the tenth-points for that round among the players, both winners and losers, who produced decisive games.
This might be manipulatable though, in situations where you have “teamwork” tactics occurring. You could apply the rule only in the early and middle rounds though, when enough uncertainty exists to perhaps vitiate such “teamwork”. Still, in order to successfully manipulate a rule like this, somebody has to win some games!
I don’t know under which thread to post this, so I’ll try here.
Read the Danailov and Kasymzhanov exchange on ChessPro. Danailov pours dirt on Morozevich, Kasymzhanov and Dolmatov (Russian Olympic coach). According to Danailov, Morozevich originated the accusation of Topalov using computer assistance. Anyway, the reason I write about it here is that according to Kasymzhanov Danailov himself twice offered Kasymzhanov a draw before the second Topalov-Kasymzhanov game in San Luis.
This tournament is boring all drawas so far except for 2 games its disgusting !
It is time to stop blaming Kramnik and to start blaming ourselves; for our mismanagement of the rules of chess; for our inability to tolerate sensible changes to the “untouchable” rules; for our inability to evolve the rules as has become increasingly necessary.
A chunk of the fault lies in a couple of minor rules we humans have *unnecessarily* imposed on these pieces used on this board:
[1] No draw offers may be made or accepted before both players have completed 30 moves.
[2] Why must a draw offer expire so quickly? Ironically, the longer life an offer has, the fewer times a player will dare to make a draw offer! Instead of expiring after one move, the offer should live until the receiver of the offer has complete two subsequent moves. That way he could gamble with the first of those two moves, and perhaps his opponent (who offered the draw) will make a weak reply giving winning chances after all.
[3] The castling rule should be tweaked to make opposite wing castling desirable more often. IF you castle to the wing opposite the one your *opponent has already* castled to, you should enjoy the option to put your king+rook on a1+b1 or b1+c1 or c1+d1 (in a common example where opponent has already castled to g1+f1), and not be restricted to just c1+d1.
“But we canNot change the untouchable rules of chess!”. So the plan is to fix the problem without making any changes…?
[4] Let chess960 join traditional “chess1” in the brotherhood of chess. We do not yet know how much chess960 might reduce the draw rate – we should find out.
The original blog post said we should use financial threats involving next year’s invitation list as the proper means for affecting strategy decisions in today’s live game. I have not seen this discussed in any book about how to best play chess, nor will I, because it smells *artificial*.
Artificial is like this: Suppose the commissioner of Baseball threatened to fine a Manager unless the Manager started an old popular player instead of better player few had heard of: is that proper Major League Baseball behavior? At some abstract level this is what the “Do not invite them again” philosophy is like – artificial.
Evolve the rules of chess instead.
Thanks.
Gene Milener
http://CastleLong.com/