New methods of reducing number of draws in chess (an article)

During last FIDE Candidates, chess fans suggested some interesting rules against draws. I summarized some of them and wrote this small article.

First of all, draws is one of the biggest problems of modern chess. Draw significantly decrease chess' appeal as popular sport and commercial sport competition. This last tournament brings the problem to new level. Most games were draw, more than half of all matches were resolved in rapid chess and even blitz, and semifinal games were all draw. People start to think about perspectives of chess with so-called classic time control. It is looking like "Draw death of chess" had returned from times of Capablanca to finally overcome the game.

Audience of chess games was a bit upset with series of draws, and a few suggestions against draw were made.

One popular idea is to perform rapid and blitz games before not after classic chess matches. That way one player, who had won rapid, receives an advantage at start. If classic match of, for example, 6 games, is drawn, player with advantage will win. Since leader is known before start of classic games, each draw makes some result, draw is best for leading player. That way loser should try to win every game so no more games without a real fight and tension. This idea is suitable for matches; it actually does not decrease number of draws, but reduce fast draws without a fight. So we can say in news, in match Kramnik - Aronyan Kramnik leads with an advantage; he made a draw and saved his advantage.

Another idea, this one was presented by me, is to award winners of result games with special prize fund. I.e. half of tournament prize is divided among winners of result game. That way a player, who scored +4 -4 =4, gets 4 time more additional money than those who scored +1 -1 =10. This idea is for elite tournaments. Active players would receive more money, so they can create better teams and make better progress. Also, this should increase tension in tournament, as more result games will more quickly change player standings.

And my favorite most radical idea, which could possibly resolve all chess problems, is to treat draw as black victory. So simply no more draws. Just white or black. I give basis of this idea. Today chess is so developed on highest player level that white has significant advantage. Only white could pretend to victory without waiting significant opponent's mistakes. Black try to get position equalization first, and once they get it, a game is often drawn soon. Initial position is either draw or white wins, so black victory has not much sense for science point of view. White just selected wrong variant, they will not play it any more.

Today white tend to seek position with stable advantage without risk of loss. This is especially true in matches. If there would be no difference between loss and draw, white could play risky and select sharp moves. They will search interesting undefined positions instead of boring risk free positions with small advantage as they do now.

Chess is a model of war and white attacks black, black is defending side. That way draw is actually victory of black cause they defend their side. While if one side had an advantage but dif not achieve targets, it is a loss. When a player saves very difficult position, you can say that such a draw costs a victory and now we know initial position is difficult for black.

My idea is especially suitable for matches. For example, 6 game match, each player has 3 white attempts to score, and who had won more games with white color is declared as winner. It is very much like tennis set, where each player should handle his service. But in new rule set, each player should handle black color and try to win with white. So we will not see any boring match like Kramnik-Leko full of draws. And last FIDE tournament would be much much more exiting. Instead of short draws with out a fight, we would see risky attempts to score. We would not see all this bunch of draws of all sorts. Btw, this idea is to work only on elite chess level. And of course, we need special rules for professional high-level competition. Cause in any kind of sport top competitions like NHL, NBA has its own precise set of rules. On such level, every small detail is important and could affect game style. For example, little variations of hokey goalkeeper uniform could bring usual match from zero to tens pucks on average. Rules should be adapted to make competitions exiting for watch and to save chess nature as war on board.

Chess fan Ischukin came to this idea from so-called "Armageddon" blitz game, where white had a bit more time, but should win. It is very sporting.

Also removing draws is very good for advanced chess. Now white lose very seldom in advanced chess, but many games are boring. But if white would have to only think about winning, this would lead to interesting games and attempts to win.

Removing of draws could save modern chess. Once known as conjunction of sport, art and science, now chess is becoming strange sport without competition nature, which is very unattractive to wide audience. And this idea could return sport, art and science components of chess. It is very sporting to eliminate draws, a player will get a freedom to create any possible plan to win, cause he should not care about minimal draw result anymore and it is interesting from scientific point of view to finally know is white wins or draw.

Really, we had already tested this suggestion on highest player level. Sometimes situation dictates that only win is matter. I mean known situations at the end of famous Kasparov-Karpov matches, when one player leaded and only win in last game could save other player. There were a few such decisive games, win or death. Those were interesting games, no short draws, no boring stuff. In one game Kasparov had played very sharp Sicilian defense. In more recent Kramnik-Kasparov match, Kasparov was in a situation at the end of a match where he should only play for win. It was games with tension too. Also, in followed series of tournament Kasparov-Kramnik games, where Kasparov tried to break "Berlin wall" and finally success and won one game, all draws were positively black wins, cause black kept their defense. It was interesting games too with meaningful draws. Cause each draw was some kind win for Kramnik. Kramnik, btw, himself had play for win his last game in match with Leko, and that was not common short draw. So, idea was checked up in some ways on elite competitions and results were good.

Removing draws surely will open various new possibilities for chess promotion and advancement in sport market, without any harm to classical chess nature as other suggestions like short time control do.

Andrey Chitatelsky, RF.

well, you could always forbid the players from offering draws until, say, 40 moves have been played. i forget what that system was called. also you could determine the result of a drawn game by the amount of time remaining on each player's clock. i started a forum topic regarding this idea called Ideas For Time Management

Draws are only bad when players do them intentionally to avoid fighting other strong players to make sure they get a spot in the finals; aka, the grandmaster's draw where they play out a series of complicated moves to please the viewers. And, the only thing I see these blitz games doing is letting these GMs run through their prearranged games much quicker to draw each other without notice.

The only way I can truely see stopping them from doing this is make a draw equal a loss and a loss on their ego.. I mean their elo!

Indeed, this conspiracy has been going on since the days of that scoundral Lasker, and it must be put to an end!

I don't like the 2nd or 3rd options listed-way too radical. The 1st idea seems interesting though.

Why should a person with a record of 4 W/4 L/ 4 D get more prize than 1 W/ 1 L/ 10 D? They are both the same amount of points (6.0/ 12).

However, I see where your going with this and in fact, using the Sofia system, the first case has 16 pts I believe and the second has 13. Sofia rules give +3 to a win, +1 to a draw, +0 to a loss.

And the final case for giving Black draw odds for every game is just too much. I would actually argue that this would make it 'more boring' so to say. No more of Sicilians, Ruy Lopez 3...f5's, KIDs, Grunfelds, Dutch, Semi-Slav. Increased # of Petroffs, Berlins, Caro-Kann's, Slav's, QGD's....Black would play to Draw.

The rule about no draws until a certain move is fine (with exceptions like 3-move rep..)

But draws are part of the game surely?

No! The draws are coming! They will burn your home and eat your family! They must be stopped! Enlist now!

Yes, they are, but the problem is not draws, rather intentional draws, as CMGuess pointed out.

One of the problems was the matches were too short (or more specifically, organization in FIDE didn't get good enough sponsorship).

In regular top level tourneys this isn't a problem though right?  These draws happened in match play.

how do you mean intentional draws though? When you are losing, and you force a stalemate, surely that's "intentional"?

"intentional draws" refer to the idea of pre arranged draws.  The players may not explicitly say to eachother before the game "you want to draw this next round?" (they might!) but more subtle would be "offering" the draw through unambitious moves, and when your opponent reciprocates you offer a draw.  This could be as simple as keeping a symmetrical pawn structure and trading off nearly all the pieces.

lol, I had a draw that fit this description last tourney :D  Last round of the day, turns out we were both tired and wanted a quick game, but it was totally unplanned heh.

+1 !

 Because they played more fighting chess... AND to add to this they should have the BILBAO scoring system so in that case the person with 4 wins 4 losses 4 draws 16 points opposed to the person with 1 win 1 loss 10 draws who has 13 points.. this would make alot more sense.

EDIT I read your 3rd paragraph my bad.. its bilbao scoring system and sophia rules is 30 moves no draw.

But that would be cheating anyway surely if it was done in an international tournament?

1. Draws are not a "problem" in chess. Draws are a problem for chess as a business because the chess astute audience is small.
2. Some of the best games in history are draws where both sides played masterful games and the expected result of near perfect play was achieved!

The real problem is short draws, and for this there is no really good solution.

We can instittue rules to make draws longer. But that doesn't stop them.

The biggest problem with the candidates was the short knockout format. With only 6 games, it is simply not worth it for the players to take risks because there aren't enough games left for them to make up for any mistake.With no incentive to take a risk, the number of quick, non-fighting drawn games is going to be high

The easiest solution is simply to not count draws but rather give the match win to the first person to x number of wins. Remember Kasparov and Karpov? And was anyone complaining about those draws? I certainly wasn't! However, that presents a problem for the event organizers.

Given the desire to have a known time limit for the match duration, the only options left that do not detract from the game itself is to lengthen the match or return to round robin play.

Chess needs Instant Death in drawn positions.  The players can start throwing captured pieces at each other until the other one flinches, and failing that to produce a clear winner, they both have to start telling puns to each other based on the last pun told. The first one who fails to come up with a salient valid pun within 5 seconds loses.

Win 5 points. Draw with white 2 points. Draw with black 3 points ?

The problem is how to make chess a spectator sport. Sitting around for a several hour game and then seeing it's drawn and then seeing 8 more draws, that's just not going to seduce the general public. I hope when we try to choose the idea we remember what the real objective is.

Difference between draw and draw can me huge one. First one can be so called grandmaster draw; about 15 or 20 moves, and last one can be fighting chess where white sacrifices and attacks, and then when attack does not leat to mate makes draw with perpetual check. So draw is not necesserily bad in itself. It is the form of draw what makes diffirence.

I rekon making a draw a win for black will totally throw the game out of wack . However I do agree black should b given some compensation for the draw as it is , at top level harder to win with black .

 The solution to this is kinda obvious ..

Just dont score the games 1/2 / 1/2  ,  0 / 1 , 1/ 0.  Make the score out of a higher value - lets say 10 .  So a win is 10 a loss is zero and a draw is lets say  6 for black and only 4 for white ?

I think this could work . 

Yes, I'd thought of that idea as well be conceptualised it as 0.4 and 0.6 with 1 for a win.

Having said that, going by the game explorer after 1e4 white wins nearly 40 % - lets keep the numbers simple - and black wins 30 %. So our idea might be slightly biased towards black. Using 1e4 results as a baseline (and for the pedants we could use a larger database and not use 40 % etc)

What about 100 points for a win. For a draw black gets 40 points and white gets 30 points - reversing their win ratios so to speak. Both players being penalised, but white more, for not winning ?