Imagine you have this position on the board. Bishop and Knight vs King is 100% won for white, however it is not the most simple of endgames and even if you know the mating pattern, it will still take some time to grind out a win.
Compare the work white has to do to black, who can just move his king back and foward in the centre and pray that white doesn't know how to mate here. Now imagine it has been a hard fought game and both players are low on time. Clearly it is unfair for black to earn a win just because all he has to do is run away from the (hopefully) inevitable mate.
As you can see I am in favour of the 'draw when checkmate is impossible rule'. I think it is punishment enough for white (in my example) to only receive 0.5 points for what clearly should be the full point for a win if he had enough time.
Most of us agree that time currently is part of the game.
You can have a better position but if you don’t make your moves in time you have lost the game.
Since we agreed that time is part off the game this sounds perfectly reasonable.
However a few rules regarding time strike me as odd.
I’ll post the first one here.
Whenever your opponent is not able to checkmate you by any serie off legal moves and you run out off time, it is a draw.
Why?
I understand the idea. “You wouldn’t be checkmated so you wouldn’t lose if not for the clock.”
But since we agreed to make the time part off the game, it sounds perfectly fair to say that you lost.
In fact what we are saying now is: “Well yes, I lost on time but when we look at the board, I could not be checkmated, so well call it a draw.”
So far my thoughts. What do you think?