On Dec 6, 2:56 pm, SBD wrote:
Always good to see ideas here, although I must confess at the outset
that I see nothing wrong with draws per se. In college football, for
an analogy, the tiebreak rules just serve, in my opinion, to exhaust
and injure the players, just to try to get a decisive result, which is
often just due to an error of exhaustion, and ruins a well-played
game.

On Dec 6, 12:54 pm, zdrakec wrote:

Hullo all:

Giving some thought to how draws happen over the board, it occurs to
me that many of the rules in place that allow draws to happen are
quite arbitrary, and have little or nothing to do with the actual
movement of the pieces. With that in mind, the following rule changes
strike me as perhaps interesting:
1. Draws may not be agreed.

Why not?

2. Three-fold repetition shall be illegal. That is, the player having
the move may not make a move that repeats the position for the third
time.

So you would force him to lose if the only other option(s) loses? This
seems to degrade the game. However, it does seem worthy of discussion.
Of all your suggestions, this one is the most interesting.

If he has no other legal move, we may regard this as a form of

stalemate, perhaps. I am not completely sure, but I think that this
rule would do away with perpetual check.

It would not do away with perpetual check, since that isn't part of
the rules, but in a perpetual, there is a three-fold.

Without this, a game could go on literally forever.

Thoughts?

Those are mine, for good or bad. But why so many games have to be
decisive is a mystery to me. A well-played draw is a good thing in my
eyes.

Thanks for the feedback. I also see no problem with draws per se, I
simply think that allowing one to be agreed is arbitrary and
artificial. I guess what I mean is that the draw should be the logical
outcome of the play, not the outcome of the players' possible
unwillingness to risk a decision.

The reason I speculated that perpetual check would go away, if a
player was not allowed to repeat the position three-fold, is that
eventually, in a perpetual, the position would in fact get repeated.
At some point, the player will have to choose a move that does not
bring about a repetition (if we have outlawed the three-fold
repetition). Otherwise, as you say, the game could go on forever!

Cheers,

zdrakec