An open letter to FIDE

Hello,

I submitted recently three e-mails to FIDE, that I am going to open for public discussion:

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Dear ladies and gentlemen officials of the FIDE,

I have a proposition for which I believe it would most efficiently and effectively reduce draws, especially those early and arranged ones. The idea is that after a draw by agreement, unlike any other outcome of the game, both players are required to defend their decision by holding their respective positions for another 50 moves against the engine (some state of the art engine, obviously the same for both players, installed on the same computer), ie continue playing trying to not get checkmated, in the same
tempo as the original game was played between human competitors. Only the one who succeeds would book a half point, while the other would lose it.
I expect this rule might be especially good for tournaments, since the expected outcome in case of a "non technical" draw wold be both players losing their half points, which would make a difference to those games that were decided directly between human players, but it has decent potential to make a difference in singles matches too, since it is not entirely sure that players would both succeed or both fail.
Further benefit from this rule is that would probably move the frontier of human understanding of what exactly is the technical draw, and what is not.
That would however impose some further requirements for the organizers of the events, and it could be left to them to decide would they implement it or not. That is, it could be optional, unless maybe for the events on the highest level for which it could be mandatory. Also, it could be left for the arbiters to decide is it really necessary to use this rule in each particular case of a technical draw beyond any doubts.
I am aware of the past efforts in this area, but I believe my solution of the problem is superior to a simple rule that forbids draw by agreement before move x, where x is 30 or something. It would highly improve the game, its commercial potential, it would be much more interesting to watch it on TV, it would once forever remove "a stain on our game".
I will make this an open letter by posting it in internet chess forums, for public debate.

Best regards,
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... OK, reconsidering a bit, this wasn't nearly as good idea as I thought, since people would simply adapt to that rule by reducing the material to a degree that is a technical draw defendable against any engine. So, either some modification to the rule is required, that would give engines a chance to punish players who arrange draws, or let's rather forget about the whole idea.
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Obvious, but not necessarily fair modification of the rule, would be that arbiters can arbitrarily choose a position from the game from which players should continue against the engine, ie not necessarily from the last move.
Thanks for the attention and good bye.
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The idea is simple: no draw by agreement is accepted, until confirmed by defending the position against the engine. If players claim they reached the draw, they should prove it to everyone who is interested in following their match. And I can't imagine more objective, impartial, competent, and patient judge for that matter, than chess engines.
I think there is no need to explain why is that important. Agreeing to a draw before the game even started, or very early during the game, without any serious thought to outcompete the opponent, is not characteristics of sportsmanship, it is not fun, it is not interesting to watch, in any kind of competition, chess is not exception here. Chess is however rare sport that allowed draws by agreement between competitors at any time, which were not obligated to explain to anyone how did they exactly come to that conclusion at that moment. If they were playing only for themselves, that would be OK, but since there is a public audience who invest their time and money to follow their competition, this is not OK. There was also next to nothing to object to players too, for they simply obeyed the rules of their game. And I think that simply forbidding a draw by agreement before move 30, by the same rules, is not satisfactory solution.

Draws by threefold repetition should be treated by the same rule, at least in case when repetition appears to be reached by an agreement, like in case of Nakamura vs McShane, instead of as a result of competition, when weaker side forces the draw by perpetual check,
or by perpetual threat to reverse the current balance of power in the game, that the stronger side can neither avoid nor accept.

What I don't like about my propositon however is the fact that it is possible to drive each agreed draw to a draw by insufficient material, which makes difficult to apply the same rule to this outcome of the game, although I think this should be somehow treated the same way,  it would be obviously pointless to require players to continue to play from the last move in that case. And I'm not satisfied with a solution of that problem that I proposed, so some further modification has to be done.

Draw by fifty move rule however is a good candidate to be also treated by the proposed rule. Stalemate as an outcome of the game is not subject to the proposed rule.

There are two more points that I think might be an issue. First, in order to successfuly propose such an enhancement, one should take into account all stakeholders in this game: players, their teams (trainers, coaches, seconds, managers, whatever), all possible chess organizations (federations, clubs, portals), sponsors of organizations and events, and finally, spectators of the show, that is millions of amateur players that are actually targeted audience of chess competitions. All of them have to agree that the proposition is beneficial for the game, ie that it means an improvement. I feel too much being an outsider (no chess rating, no important connections in chess community, I am even not a member of my national chess association) for anyone to take my suggestion seriously into consideration, I simply don't see my self being able to initiate such a basic change of chess rules. For example, FIDE officials did not dignify a response in any way whatsoever until now, OK, no big surprise there, I wonder if I used a proper channel at all to submit such a proposal, I wrote to office@fide.com.
The other point is that there may be some simpler ways to achieve aproximately the same goal, for example to change the scoring system in favour of wins like in football, where the win is three times more valuable than a draw. The point would not be split into two halves in case of a draw (it would be split in two thirds), which makes obviously such a change meaningfull in competitions where there are more than two competitors, such as tournaments and leagues, but this wouldn't change a thing for a WC match for example.
So, I still think that my idea has some merit in comparison to that too, and I am soliciting opinions now here and possibly on some other forums, feel free to comment and thanks for your attention.

OK, this time I did my homework and found some relevant stuff:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/a-cure-for-sad-severe-acute-drawitis-
https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-draw-problem-a-simple-solution
https://en.chessbase.com/post/a-new-angle-on-understanding-the-draw-problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draw_by_agreement#Only_theoretical_draws_allowed_.28Sofia_Rules.29

and realized two things about my ideas:

1.) That part when I talk about how to solve so called "Severe Acute Drawitis" by changing the scoring system like it has been done in football was completely unnecessary repetition, since the problem has been already broadly discussed for at least 10 years, many people already suggested exactly the same thing with exactly same argumentation
2.) Noone in the world so far did come up with anything similar to a solution that I proposed, so my idea is original at the global scope and very revolutionary and radical one

And finally, the most important thing is that I solved by myself what occured to me as a problem in my proposal, by realizing where did I go wrong in my conclusions:
It would not be human arbiters that would choose the position from where players should continue playing against an engine, it would be done by a computer program too. That would guarantee impartiality and fairness of such decision. A host program that loads the engine, would feature also a separate modul specially designed to analyze the game with several goals:
1. to find a move from where players started to play based on their agreement to conclude a draw by reducing the material without a fight, trying to avoid the potential loss against the engine, and if such thing happened, it would simply cut off that crappy part of the game like it was never played 
2. to find a move from which onwards it thinks it can still defeat both of them
3. to find the latest such move, ideally the last one played, if players played with a fair dose of fighting spirit

The fact that such a software module does not exist yet doesn't bother me much. 

The fact is also that a perfect automatic chess tutor does not exist yet, but it will some day, that's for sure.

So, the first two tasks for the analysis of silicon arbiter are relatively independent one to each other.

The key to the solution of the first task revolves around computer capability to recognize the difference between adversarial and cooperative playing mode. Although far from being trivial, this AI task is not mission impossible. Existence of serious threats, score trends and variations, and similar analysis should give a clue to the silicon arbiter how serious was fight that was going on during the game. But even if all problems posed to the implementators of such a software are solved, there are still problems possible with the whole concept. Obviously, computer is only able to analyze objective metrics of a played game, but if input data itself is not genuine, that is if game was an prearranged draw, but played like some real risks were undertaken by players, that is another level of deception that is questionable if software could detect. Obviously, the aim of such a play would not be just to deceive the silicon arbiter in that case, but the public audience too, which would be not very high level of sport ethics in that case.

The point is that depending on the course of the game, not both goals should be tried to be accomplished at the same.

Players can't keep up with a modern engine for 50 moves in a normal game so anything requiring to do that to "justify" a draw is simply asking them to adhere to an impossible standard.

To achieve a draw against an opponent, one does not have to be as good as the best possible engine, one just needs to play just as good as that opponent.

Also, no software can be used against prearranged draws. All the top Gms would need to do is learn one single game down to when both players only have kings left.

Once they can play that from memory, they can draw in bullet speed by simply playing the same old game every single time they both want a draw. No engine analysis can prevent that.

If they were required to play from the starting position, then I guess it would be impossible for them to hold, the longer they are required to play, the harder task to accomplish. But they would be required to play from the point they claim it's a draw.

Or, to achieve a draw against an opponent, arbiters should be convinced players reached a draw?

Don't you think that such a trick would be noticeable easily? But, thank you for your comments anyway.

Draws are just fine, thank you.

They are finer than defeats, that's for sure. But even more fine is to be able to think out of the box, having some cool, wild ideas, that cannot be easily implemented in any foreseeable future, but you still know it is inevitable for them to become reality one day. How cool is that? 

And if you are jealous of me because of that, you cannot just sit and wait for me to come up with all of their weaknesses by my self, and then just repeat my point adding one bad example to it, like Graf_Nachthafen did in his 3rd paragraph, or present such elaborate arguments like 4sakeninfinity did. That simply won't work here. You have to take some serious initiative in order for your attack to be successful, because that's how life imitates chess. Right?

Looking forward then to you designing a new boardgame better than chess that will live on longer and gather more fans.

As for changing chess rules, there's an easy million guys out there with each and every one of them thinking only he has the one idea for the perfect chess rule change.

And of course, each of them wants just his own proposed change to be implemented and not any of the other 999.999 rule change proposals.

Sorry to tell you outright, but chess is fine as it is, so leave it alone.

If you don't like the chess rules you're free to use all that creativity you claimed to have and invent a better game where only you have a say in the rules.

If it's good enough, players will flock to your game. But somehow, I doubt it.

If I was to invent just another chess variant, and think this can be something appealing and new, I would probably accept this critique. But this is much more ambitious try, to improve the chess game itself. Like, when FIFA introduced the back-pass rule in 1992. If they thought football is fine as it was, let's leave it alone, that beneficial change of that game would never happen.

Excellent idea. I am sure all those organizers of small weekend tournaments with 2 games a day and a very narrow schedule will be delighted to have 20 players a round queuing up to get the chance to continue their games for an additional hour on the only notebook available...

Why all the draw hostility among amateurs? If you don't like Super-GM draws why not watch chess at a slightly lower level (2200-2600), eg. women's championships, smaller tournaments, national championships etc. where most games will have a decisive result?

I'm not hostile at all, and I said it doesn't have to be mandatory rule on lower levels, didn't I?

... not every village football playground can have goal-line technology, but it still can be used for competitions.

I don't see a reason to prevent draws, ESPECIALLY agreed draws.

The two players both agree on the draw. Why should we introduce any way to prevent that?
If one side doesn't agree, they play on.

I could understand if you were to argue against other forms of draws, but agreed ones?

Obviously, no side sees a win, otherwise they won't agree on a draw, simple as that. 

60k spectators arrives at the stadium to watch highly anticipated game that is supposed to last 90min, be transmitted to the whole world, but they play for 10 minutes and both conclude the opponent team is very solid and they have no resources at the moment to outplay them, hence they agree to a draw

Yes.

Those 60k spectators are all familiar to the rules of chess, and have no right to complain.

is it my fault they still complain? besides that, human race that created the game of chess has every right to change its rules, did it before throughout history, and will continue to do it in the future

If, and when, that's another question.