this guys are chicken poooooooo!!!

i think it was a very much disappointing game .... a world class A superGM's player

like this i can't imagine if all the players in one tournament agree a 20 moves draw without  a capture in intire tournament will results a tremendous tournament specially if all the players are Super GM's ..and that rule is very much stupid..........

i think anand , carlsen , kramnik,and aronian are the best SuperGM's nowadays, why? beacause they play a chess game without indecision....they will kill you right away............i hate draws like this ........

very  disappointing.

I think these GMs have this attitude that unless the see an advantage/imbalance on the board they just draw. Boris and Ruslan are not killers who fight until the end, Anand, Carlsen and Aronian are the only killers who I can think of right now. 

Disappointing, but it seems Black has fully equalized the game.  Gelfand didn't get whatever he wanted out of the Catalan, so he agreed to Ponomariov's draw offer.

It is doubtful Gelfand wants to go to the tiebreaker, because Ponomariov has a huge edge against him in rapid and blitz.  More likely he saw no promising chance to win and decided not to expend the energy as the older player.  If he can hold a draw with Black, he will have another chance to spring something with White before the tiebreak.  So I see this as a strategic decision on both sides - Ponomariov must look toward a tiebreak with confidence, Gelfand believes he can win a must-win game against Ruslan with the White pieces.

The amounts of money at stake argue against excessive risk-taking. 

can it be assumed that both player are seeking for rapid chess or even blitz and lay their destiny on it ?

how this pos draw is understood

Has anyone run this position through rybka or something like that?? And I lol'ed when I read archaic71's post =) .. pansies indeed!

Right now in London, the best players in the world are playing a round robin tourney where a win is worth 3 pts and a draw only one.  The caliber of chess is considerably better in London today then it is in Khanty-Mansiysk.  Luke McShane beat Nigel short in an EIGHT HOUR - 163 move game!  These to pansies could not even suffer through 20 book moves?  Sad.

This is what we get for our 'knock out' tournaments?  If they want to play blitz so bad they should just play blitz and be done with this garbage. 

It may not be what people think.  Perhaps both players wanted to draw because each thinks he will do better at Rapid/Blitz times than the other.  If you look at previous rounds, Pono won many rounds in rapid.  Gelfand won more rounds in the regular time controls, but maybe he has some home-brew stuff that he is cooking up, and doesn't want to "spring it" until the Rapid times, so that his opponent has less time to analyze a complex home brew.  I look at it like strategy for the match, rather than strategy for the game.  Metagaming, as it is often called.

What others said about risk is true too.  The difference between 1st and 2nd prize is ($120k-$80k = $40,000 US (net $32,000 after FIDE's cut))  This is more than most people make in a year, and it's all riding on a couple of games of chess.  As super GM's, the two should be used to this kind of pressure, but, man; I wouldn't be.......

I wouldn't have accepted a draw if I were playing white. Too much game left. It's a fun position too.

That final position looks so crazy and crowded lol.  Not a single capture.  Looks like no one wanted to play chess today.

jugfingers, that wouldnt make any sense at all. there are drawish positions were even though there is material to give mate, are 99.9% sure to end in a draw. In those situations, draw agreements are "forced", since players dont want to spent all energy on a position that leads nowhere. This is not the case of this game, but we have to accept that agreements can happen all time.

There is no way to stop agreements. For example, if me and my oponent really want a draw from the start, we can just make a plan before the game to end up with just kings on the board (for example), we can just play to reach a drawish position, and that would end in the same as asking for draw at start of the game. Its hard to know when there is agreement or not. Players can easily simulate that they are playing hard, when they arent at all and they already agreed on the result. And i think thats why there isnt a rule about that, it would be pointless, between draw in the first move or agreeing in a draw before the game and just go to the board make some moves ends up in the same.

And what westcoastchess said its true, games with so much at stake, each player will not take risk if the results of it are very unclear. We have to understand whats at stake, and each player do what he cans to take the victory home. In this case, better to draw 1 or 2 games, than losing a possible lifetime chance with a mistake. Although people may not like it, we have to understand that.

The final position is still very playable! Why are they permitting this kind of draw? It’s a disrespect to chess fans! FIDE should pass a rule to deduct both players ELO points for quick draws. It’s not about having an Equal position. It’s about who will prevail from a given Equal Position is the better player. After all, chess is roughly equal at the first move. If it's initially equal then why do we move in the first place? Aren't we used to rest when we feel tired at mid study and call it quits? Ofcouse it's possible. But COMPETITION is different! It it's TOURNAMENT! A COMPETITION is supposed to be fought!  I know they’re tired but this is what competition is all about! Imagine if quick draw is applied in boxing and the sport will slowly die just like chess.

just like a boxer isnt forced to throw a punch in the 1st 10 seconds of a fight, a strong GM isnt forced to win every since game. they both wernt 100% wanting a draw coming into the game, its just that they got to a spot where neither was satisfied to envolve any risk.

You shouldn't be able to agree to a draw! why is this a rule in chess?

only repetition/loss of mating material and stalemate should= a draw.

what an unfun way to play the game!

It doesnt matter how many rules they create to avoid draws, if both players want to draw it from the start (draws by agreement), they will just do it.

It doesnt matter if people say: You cant draw before move 20 (for example), then the players would just play 20 moves and then agree to a draw. If it was 3 pt for win, 1 for draw wouldnt change anything in a 2 men round (since a draw doesnt create any difference between the 2 players), and also, that rule tend to create big differences between players in bigger groups, and that can cause the ones that will get to the bottom of the table to "quit" trying to win and just trying not to lose more than what was already lost. Yeah, probably not the right atitude, but sometimes, players just want for tournaments to end soon and go on to the next one.

So as conclusion, this just happens in chess. As draws are part of the game, there is no way to stop players from think in a draw even before the start of the game.

what's an exciting but bored waiting for...Gelfand boost up Ur mind nXt..

According to the rules, 20 moves w/o a capture is a draw. Anyway, it seemed they deliberately went for a draw by avoiding any capture.

Possibly it is called GMs' draw.