Draws should count less than loss

They're not playing accurately they're playing with the draw in their pocket "just in case".

Again imagine this other scenario :

More than 200 players in a big single elimination tournament. 

Except this time only winner goes on to the next stage .

Everyobody would play for the win with black or white. Cause 1 loss, 1 draw and you go home.

Only the brave would get to the quarter, the semi and finally the final.

And the one who would win the tournament...

Would have won every game he played !

A truly romantic performance. A la bobby fisher.

Would you say that players in this tournament wouldn't play accurately ? If they wouldn't their opponent would take advantage of their misplay and play for the win themselves.

Tal played accurately it was a romantic design-to-win style of play anyway.

Players needs to play accurately AND create chances. That's what a truly great player do.

It's like in entrepreneurship, A good entrepreneur take risk it's not just "someone who doesn't make mistakes".

At a conceptual level, if the issue is courage, romanticism & art vs. control-your-risks cold calculation, I think the answer was determined over the board in the late 1800's.  But not 100%.  Methinks Capablanca, Tal, Fisher (some examples) found room to show that art still could work.

At a personal level, I can say that if I'm playing someone who's much better than I am, I am way happy to achieve a draw.  I can gloat to myself over some of these for a week (i.e., until the next club meeting...)  So there's that.

Do you find satisfaction in playing a good defense against stronger forces?  

As for running high-level tournaments/matches: wasn't it Fisher's idea to make draws meaningless - no points for anyone ?

Yes. If there are situations in which is it an advantage to play a losing move, you can't expect accurate play.

You didn't read my example, it would never be an advantage to play a losing move in this situation.

Yes, I replied to the OP, but quoted your post. My fault. Regarding your example, it doesn't suffer from that problem, but there are still strange side effects. Imagine two of the strongest players meeting in the first round. Both try desperately to win, but their games are eventually drawn. First round exit for both. What?

It's tragic but it's life.

Caîssa wasn't with them this day.

This tournament reward the player who will be able to win 6 games in a row. 

If you fail to win your first game no matter how cruel that may seem you don't deserve to sit on the throne.

Yes. I don't want Caissa to decide tournaments. I don't want the best players who played the best chess to be eliminated early just because none of them proved to be superior.

Yes. Imagine an open tournament, 200 players, first round, only one decisive game: a 1600 vs a 1200. This 1600 will be the proud winner of the tournament.

Ultimately the goal of the game is to checkmate the opponent.

1 player no matter how beautiful his draw was cannot be considered more worthy of the throne than a player who actually won a game.

I don't understand your point now that I think about it more carefully.

Imagine this situation in a round robin nowadays :

The 2 top players made a draw in the first round, it was very exciting. Another players won against a lesser players. After that there's almost only draw in the tournament.

How do we decide the winner of the tournament ? It's the one that actually won 1 game + all the draws. No matter how beautiful the draws of the 2 top seeds were they were just draw ^^... They don't deserve to be on the throne the same way as in my example.

And I think you're also talking about all those situation where top seeds are eliminated early on because they fight each other while other bad players pass the round because they played lesser player. It happen in every bad agenced tournament ! And it sucks !

Of course the top seeds won't be paired in the first few round.

Lol you're both joking. It would never happen in real life.

When people are in must win situation they make effort to go out of their way.

Some chessplayers have almost no draw in their records. It's definitely a style of play to avoid confrontational chess that only lead to draws.

If BOTH player really want a fight they can always get one.

The only reason we see a lot of draw is because there's always ONE players who want to steer the game toward the draw (a lot of the time the player with the black pieces).

EDIT : And again The top seeds will be paired with the lesser players in the early round that's how it works in competitive single elimination tournament. Think about the soccer world cup, we don't put all great team in the same pool.

Since the game of chess is a draw when neither side makes a mistake--draws should not be demoted.

We have just very different opinions on who deserves that. Certainly -IMHO- not a bad player who managed to get a few wins because they got a lucky draw, while tons of superior players played excellently, but drawed.

We obviously disagree on a very basic level, not accepting each others premises at all, so I won't argue further. If you think that the criteria you mentioned make a great winner, fine. I wouldn't care at all for the results of such a tournament.

Yes. That's not the point. The technique is call "thought experiment" and is often used to highlight edge cases to show that an idea is flawed.

In this case, the reader is implicitly expected to see that the principle behind this edge case also applies to more common scenarios.

I know don't worry.

Rules would be enforced to guarantee a good tournament experience. 

It seems simple on the paper but there's a lot of corner cases of course. Like with every format rules must be enforced for every of theses cases.

But it seems probable that in general it would go on smoothly.

I understand your idea that "it's not the best player who won" appart from that.

It feels like the kind of argument people had when the winner of the world cup as called "World champion". Of course you can have your doubt on that.

Still a strong tournament.

That's the whole point. I doubt that a rule set exists that could make up for the principle flaws. You can't suggest a set of rules and then say: "Yes, we need more rules to make it work." when it's not clear how to do it.

That might still be a different category, but yes, if you are refering to the luck-of-the-draw element of a World Cup - you are making that much worse with your tournament model. I don't find that desirable.

@finnsteur: Also worth mentioning: In the early rounds, when strong seeded players are paired with much weaker players, many of these weaker players would choose to play extremely safe, knowing that they can't outplay their opponent and hoping that the stronger player will go for extreme risks (which they eventually will, because they need a win) so they can counter. That's not the kind of chess I'd like to see.

Another scenario: player X (positional player, extremely hard to beat, many draws), knowing that they don't have a chance to win the tournament, draws twice to kick out themselves and their opponent, who is a main competitor of one of their team mates. Ugly.

Also (re "ultimate goal"), I find the goal not to be checkmated just as legit as the goal to checkmate.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. A champion is a winner. Not a non-loser.

Every rules can be found one after the other don't worry.

Concerning your first example only a coward with more than a hundred difference in point would choose that kind of strategy. With this kind of difference in point it's very difficult to force a draw anyway. You know what they say : "If you play against a strong opponent play your game, do not try to play for a draw ! you'll end up playing passive chess".

I hope the second situation never happen but you know things like that could already happen in the current system that's the kind of things russian were doing to fisher in the 60'. There's no teamate in these event what you're talking about is cheating.

But let's say a very strong player decide to commit harakiri and play for the draw (for no reason), first off this kind of player wouldn't be invited again (not fair play) and secondly you can always win a game of chess. It's on you to create chances. Kramnik with his benoni in 2004 (last match of the world championship), Caruana and his classic sicilian in 2015 (last match of the candidates).

Finally of course the difference in points in these tournament shouldn't be greater than a hundred to avoid those unsporting behavior the most.

Study the prisoners dilemma before making weird scoring proposals. There is an obvious optimal strategy for both players when drawing is penalized. One of them will propose a coin toss which says as much as "I offer a draw, do you accept?". The other player agrees to tossing a coin with the implicit meaning "I accept the draw, now let's start optimizing the score". The loser of the coin toss resigns under duress of the universal draw code. He who violates it ... well, let's not go there.