In article ,
"RPM1" wrote:

"Harold Buck" wrote ...
"RPM1" wrote:
"PJDBAD" wrote ...

I know there have been many suggestions concerning this issue.
I favor a win being worth 1 point and anything else is 0. That
way a player with 2 wins and 2 losses is ahead of the player with
4 draws.

As has been pointed out many times, this would simply encourage any game
that is "drawn" to be decided by a coin flip. That is, if you and I are
going to draw and get 0 points each, we somehow randomly decide who will
play to lose so one of us gets a point (and on average we each expect to
get 1/2 point per "drawn" game in the long run).

I highly doubt that player A will agree to take a dive with the
understanding
that someone else will allow player A to win later.

Then you don't understand probability and the phrase "the long run."

So if you and I are in a tournament and we have a drawn position and I tell
you to resign and I'll lose next time we play, you would tip your king
over?!
I'm up for that!


Um, no. But they have a system now where they agree before the game
begins that they will play for a draw. People don't cheat on this,
because if they did then word would get out and they'd never be able to
make a deal when they needed a draw to win a tournament.

This wouldn't be much different: there'd be an agreement before the game
that if the game were going to be drawn then they'd "flip a coin" to see
who wold resign. They'd be highly motivated to do this, since if the
game was drawn--under the proposed win=1, loss=draw=0 system--neither
person would get anything. By agreeing to "flip a coin"--again, I don't
think they'd make it so obvious--then they'd have a 50% chance of 1
point and a 50% chance of 0, which has an expected value of 0.5 points
for each player. Any sane person would prefer an expected value of 0.5
over 0.0.


--Harold Buck


"I used to rock and roll all night,
and party every day.
Then it was every other day. . . ."
-Homer J. Simpson