On Dec 7, 8:33 am, Anders Thulin
wrote:
zdrakec wrote:
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.

If it was a case of a single game, I think you are right. But
in a tournament, there are many games, one after another, more or less.
And a player soon gets to understand that there are two 'games':
one to play the single game, and the other to last through the tournament.

In that second context, the agreed draw make reasonably good sense.

--
Anders Thulin anders*thulin.name http://www.anders.thulin.name/

Hiya Anders, thanks for your thoughts. I can only reply with something
I read over on ChessBase today:
"Karjakin-Alekseev made an uneventful draw: the players stopped
playing in a position when the battle just started to begin."
That's just the sort of thing I'd like to see go away.

Best regards,
zdrakec

On Dec 6, 6:10 pm, David Richerby
wrote:
zdrakec wrote:
1. Draws may not be agreed.
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.

This is a book-keeping nightmare. As it is, if the players miss an
opportunity to claim a draw by repetition, nothing happens. Under
your proposed rule, if the players don't notice a repetition, one of
them has made an illegal move.

By analogy, I refer to the ko rule in Go, which essentially
prevents the same position from appearing on the board more than
once (with some rather esoteric exceptions).

The exceptions aren't esoteric at all. There are two versions of the
ko rule: one says you can't repeat a position, ever, period; the other
says that your move cannot return the board to the state it was in
after your last move.

I respectfully refer you to the "Ten-thousand year ko".


3. There shall be no 50-move limit. This becomes more practical than
it once was, in an age where clocks can have a delay, and can add
a time increment per move.

It become *less* practical than it once was, in an age where
tournaments with multiple rounds in a day are common.

4. Since the object of the game is to place the opponent's king in a
position from which it cannot avoid being captured, I suggest that
stalemate should be a loss for the stalemated player. In
principal, the player who has stalemated his opponent has
accomplished the primary goal of the game. Of course, this has
been suggested many times before.

Indeed, it has been suggested many times before. And every time it is
suggested, somebody points out that the proposed change means that
essentially any pawn-up endgame is won, which means that players will
be much less willing to sacrifice pawns and will lead to duller chess.

I am not certain, but that would seem to leave lack of mating
material as the sole way to draw a game.

That is correct.

Dave.

--
David Richerby Hilarious Drink (TM): it's like awww.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ refreshing juice beverage but it's a
bundle of laughs!

On Dec 6, 7:18 pm, Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:
zdrakec wrote:
Giving some thought to how draws happen over the board
...
the following rule changes strike me as perhaps interesting:

May I suggest starting with a logical argument as to why draws are
undesirable?

I guess I should be clear: I do not feel that draws are undesirable. I
feel that draws which are a result of an unwillingness to risk a
decision are undesirable. The suggestions I offered all flow from the
notion of preventing such chess.

Warm regards,
zdrakec



Draws may not be agreed.
...
that would seem to leave lack of mating material as the sole way
to draw a game

Which means that draws *can* be agreed, simply by trading down until
both sides lack sufficient mating material.

Since the object of the game is to place the opponent's king in a
position from which it cannot avoid being captured, I suggest that
stalemate should be a loss for the stalemated player.

This would completely change endgame strategy -- not a thing to do
lightly without at least playtesting hundreds of games first.

Thoughts?

My opinion is that the game of Chess is OK as is is. I see no
problems that justify anything other than minor tweaks. That's
why I would like discussions like this to start with an argument
as to what is wrong with the current game; most discussions like
this start with an unexamined assumption that something is wrong
with the current game.

--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/

zdrakec wrote:
Anders Thulin wrote:
And a player soon gets to understand that there are two 'games':
one to play the single game, and the other to last through the
tournament.

In that second context, the agreed draw make reasonably good sense.

Hiya Anders, thanks for your thoughts. I can only reply with something
I read over on ChessBase today:
"Karjakin-Alekseev made an uneventful draw: the players stopped
playing in a position when the battle just started to begin."
That's just the sort of thing I'd like to see go away.

The suggestion is that, if you made Karjakin and Alekseev fight in
this game, they'd be more tired later in the tournament, so be more
likely to make blunders (or that it's already late in the tournament
and they're already tired). It's not clear, of course, whether the
extra entertainment of seeing them fight in this round would
compensate for the additional tendency to blunder through tiredness
later on.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Impossible Painting (TM): it's like
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ a Renaissance masterpiece but it
can't exist!

David Kane wrote:
Don't you think that its noteworthy that in most sports ties are
either impossible or fairly rare, and in those sports where they are
possible, most of them have taken some steps to reduce their number?
(tiebreaks, OTs, scoring incentives etc.)

Soccer is one of the most popular sports on the planet and ties are
common. Cricket is more popular in India alone than most sports are
worldwide: draws[1] are common. Tie-breaks are only used in knock-
out competitions in both sports.

Ties are impossile or extremely rare in most sports either because the
goal is to be the fastest or `furthest' or because there is a vast
range of likely scores. The chance of two people running, swimming,
driving or riding some distance in exactly the same time or jumping or
throwing something exactly the same distance is negligible. The
chance of two basketball teams making the same score is low, just
because the scores are so large; rugby and American football scores
are relatively large numbers. Cricket scores are huge numbers and
there are almost no ties (as distinct from draws). Golf scores are
large numbers.

I'd be curious if you could name a single sport that has gone the
other direction -where rules which produced decisive results were
amended in order to produce more "well-played" ties?

I don't see the relevance of this. Nobody is proposing to change the
rules of chess to increase the number of draws.

I can't, and I think the reason is obvious. Most people see
an important *purpose* of a contest being producing a winner.

``I think an important purpose of a contest is to produce a winner and
I think that everyone else thinks like me.''


Dave.

[1] Not technically the same as ties and probably even worse from your
perspective: a draw means `Well, we've been playing for five days
and we still haven't figured out who won so let's just call it
quits. Maybe next time, eh?'

--
David Richerby Addictive Unholy Chicken (TM): it's
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ like a farm animal but it's also a
crime against nature and you can never
put it down!

On Dec 7, 9:27 am, David Richerby
wrote:
zdrakec wrote:
Anders Thulin wrote:
And a player soon gets to understand that there are two 'games':
one to play the single game, and the other to last through the
tournament.

In that second context, the agreed draw make reasonably good sense.

Hiya Anders, thanks for your thoughts. I can only reply with something
I read over on ChessBase today:
"Karjakin-Alekseev made an uneventful draw: the players stopped
playing in a position when the battle just started to begin."
That's just the sort of thing I'd like to see go away.

The suggestion is that, if you made Karjakin and Alekseev fight in
this game, they'd be more tired later in the tournament, so be more
likely to make blunders (or that it's already late in the tournament
and they're already tired). It's not clear, of course, whether the
extra entertainment of seeing them fight in this round would
compensate for the additional tendency to blunder through tiredness
later on.

Dave.

--
David Richerby Impossible Painting (TM): it's likewww.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ a Renaissance masterpiece but it
can't exist!

Oh, I understood Anders' point entirely. I just don't agree with the
notion that keeping an eye on one's performance in the tournament as a
whole justifies a lack of effort at any particular stage of that
tournament. Of course, Anders is not saying that it does; just that it
makes good sense on the part of the player, which is certainly true.
I'd like to see that sort of thing go away, is all.
Of course, I understand that FIDE will not have me editing the Laws of
Chess anytime soon...
Regards,
zdrakec

On Dec 7, 9:33 am, Anders Thulin
wrote:
zdrakec wrote:
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.

If it was a case of a single game, I think you are right. But
in a tournament, there are many games, one after another, more or less.
And a player soon gets to understand that there are two 'games':
one to play the single game, and the other to last through the tournament.

In that second context, the agreed draw make reasonably good sense.

Only under certain conditions.

Let's suppose that we are talking about a Swiss,
and there are no prizes for the bottom or middle
finishers -- only first, second, etc. Now, while
there can be exceptions, it generally hurts to take
a draw because that pulls one's score toward the
middle, where there are no prizes. Contrast that
to playing to win, and it becomes clear that risky
(or what is often referred to as "enterprising") play
is the order of the day.

If you have "appearance fees" and prizes galore,
even for middle finishers, that's a whole different
ball game; but then, who made anybody choose
to do it that way? It sounds like self-inflicted
pain.

As an example, I notice that late entrants -- who
are generally given a half-point bye or a zero -- are
having grave difficulties in overcoming this sizable
handicap. Yes, they may well be better-rested
than the other players, but by golly that just ain't
enough most of the time.

One area where a draw "works" is in matches,
because if a player manages to get a draw as
Black, he will automatically get the advantage of
the first move in the next game. Also note that
nobody is making headway in this case; both get
the same half-point.


-- help bot

David Kane wrote:


Don't you think that its noteworthy that in most sports ties are
either impossible or fairly rare, and in those sports where they are
possible, most of them have taken some steps to reduce their
number? (tiebreaks, OTs, scoring incentives etc.)
I'd be curious if you could name a single sport that has
gone the other direction -where rules which produced decisive
results were amended in order to produce more "well-played" ties?

Cricket. In July of 2004 the International Cricket Council changed the
rules so that a match where the toss takes place but no ball is bowled
is either a draw or (in the case of a limited-overs match) a no result.

And, of course, much effort has gone into making the "game" of global
thermonuclear warfare end up in a draw rather than a decisive victory
for one side or the other.

Does anyone have any proposals for reducing the number of draws
in tic-tac-toe?

--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/

David Kane wrote:

What I find interesting about all the threads that address draws
in chess is that they are filled with false and illogical arguments
by those who like the current draw rules. This has led me to
conclude that there is a very strong *emotional* attachment
to draws.

A fine example of the ad hominem fallacy.

If you think that an argument is false or illogical, you should
explain the specific flaw, not attack the character of those who
disagree with you. Otherwise they can simply claim that it is
*you* who is posting false and illogical arguments motivated by
*your* very strong emotional _aversion_ to draws. This sort of
argument does not ead to a decisive conclusion, and thus leads
to a drawn newsgroup thread.

--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/

On Dec 6, 11:56 pm, "David Kane" wrote:

Don't you think that its noteworthy that in most sports ties are
either impossible or fairly rare, and in those sports where they are
possible, most of them have taken some steps to reduce their
number? (tiebreaks, OTs, scoring incentives etc.)
I'd be curious if you could name a single sport that has
gone the other direction -where rules which produced decisive
results were amended in order to produce more "well-played" ties?

I can't, and I think the reason is obvious. Most people see
an important *purpose* of a contest being producing a winner.
In that light, ties are just failures. I suppose the "chess as art" school
might sees things differently, but my games at least are way
too ugly to even remotely qualify.

I don't contest this at all; I find it regrettable that people think
there must be a winner and a loser. That's not a problem with the
game, that is a problem with people.