Why is every non-checkmate a 0.5-0.5 draw?

Hi condude,

Thanks for giving me your feedback.  If White sacrifices for a mating attack, but it turns out that Black can blunt it with a 3-fold repetition, then White would get 0.3 and Black would get 0.7.  Why should White get 0.5 for screwing up that attack?

I'm not sure I follow how you think endgames become more "depressing".  One needs to play well in endgames regardless, if you can't take your material advantage and force your opponent into a stalemate, then take a fast-50 and get the "more material" score instead.  How is this different from me going to a tournament and being in a K+B+N v King endgame and knowing that theoretically I have a win, but not knowing the process of securing it.  Is that depressing to you?

Kind regards,
David

Besides the fact that you are changing the rules to mirror what you see to be the better way the game should end( player with more material is rewarded more than the player with less material), this idea is very bad for chess.

As black you should not be ambitious and only go for draws, since a draw secures you extra points vs the other player. White does not have a forced material gain so you are giving black draw odds for every game.

Assuming you make draws worth the same amount, we come to the next issue. The goal of the game of chess is to checkmate the opponent. The idea of material is not written into the rules. How do we know if someone is "up material". In some positions a rook is stronger than a queen, or a knight is stronger than a rook. Does that mean that if the other player gets a draw they should get rewarded for playing worse?

If you remove the last rule (material disbalance is irrelevant), than this becomes one of those rule changes where "stalemate should not be a draw" and most people would agree stalemate only adds to the game of chess, not subtract from it, there is no reason someone should be rewarded for stalemate.

Well, what about this position, white to move:

Hi BlueKnightShade,

In your first position, it's Black stalemating White so it's 0.8 for Black and 0.2 for White.

In the second, it's White stalemating Black... 0.8 for White and 0.2 for Black.

Material doesn't matter for stalemates in my proposal.

Kind regards,
David

So lost a tournament game without checkmate.

I understand the point system that was suggested in your opening post. My point with the two positions that I posted was to show positions where that point system doesn't make any sense, because there are none of the players who could be labelled "winner" or "loser".

In the first position white has more material and thus you might as well call him "winner" instead of calling black "winner", since in your other suggestions you want to make the material difference have a say. But personally I can not see any of them as "winner".

In the second position material is completely even, so a draw with 0.5 points to each player is absolutely fair.

Anyway, personally I like the rules of chess as they are.

Stalemate is mostly incompetence.  To be awarded more points for it is ridiculous.  If anything award less than ½ a point for the person who delivers the stalemate!

I think this whole idea is misguided. It's simply an attempt to award "style points." It doesn't matter who had the two bishops, or who had an extra pawn, or whose pieces control more squares. Who cares? Either black won, white won, or it;s a draw. If I get my draw by perpetual check, because I set up a successful fortress, or because you foolishly stalemated me while you were a queen ahead, you didn't win! Why award a consolation prize to the guy who couldn't win when  he was a pawn up.  There are few things more annoying than the guy who keeps whining "But I was two pawns up! You were so lucky." Do we want to incorporate that guy into the rules?

People like their incompetence to be rewarded!!  It makes them feel less foolish!

Yes. They tied because they played equally. A king surrounded in a hut by enemy soldiers is worth exactly the same as surrounding a king in a hut by soldiers and not being able to kill him. They are equal positions. 

In order to get a tie, or a .5 score for each side, both sides had to play equally OR one side had to play well, and then mess up just enough to offset playing well. It really does equal out in the end which is why splitting the score evenly makes perfect sense. If both sides play equally, why make the score something different than equal?

Personally, I don't really like this idea of decimals like 0.6 and 0.4. It would make things very complicated.

true, pairing and standing making is hard then

That's a fair point. The easy way to un-complicate it is to multiply all my values by 10.  10 points for checkmate, 8 for stalemate, etc.

The only reason I used the decimals was for an apples-to-apples comparison with the current system.

Kind regards,

David

Hi BlueKnightShade,

Ok. So your point is that you could be stalemated even when you have more material on your side... thus, who is winning, the guy with more material or the guy who delivered the stalemate?

To me there's no conflict. The answer is the guy who delivered stalemate... I see it the same way as a checkmate. All the material on the board doesn't matter if your king is dead... and stalemate kills the king. Not as elegantly as checkmate, but kills the king nonetheless.

Kind regards,

David

Hi IPG,

I guess I'm not understanding what you mean by "play equally". We probably agree that if one player captures the other's king, they didn't play equally, the player who lost their king was inferior, right?

What I'm saying is that this applies not only to checkmate, but also stalemate. The player whose king is trapped and cannot move without losing it, did not play the superior game. Nor did she play an equal game. She lost her king. It's a quirk of history that this is scored in tournaments as a tie, because every beginner I teach sees clearly that the king is dead.

Kind regards,

David

Hi Petrip,

Thanks for your feedback, but I have to disagree with you about chess's brokenness. I believe that chess is broken because of its draws, the flaw that allows a player to pull the 3-move repetition emergency brake on an otherwise losing position, the ability for players to make draws-by-agreement to "save their energy" (or their prize), and the effects draws have on spectators. I think it is ridiculous that chess players consider a stalemate a tie, when one side has clearly lost their king.

All this is documented in my essay linked in the OP. 

Kind regards,

David

I think this is a move in the right direction, even if too far. Thus, instead of forcing stalemate being 0.8 to 0.2, I would suggest making it 0.6 to 0.4. This way, since it is nearly a draw compared to checkmate, existing endgame theory, part of which is devoted to avoiding a stalemate when checkmate is possible, remains unaffected, but a new section of endgame theory, on forcing stalemate when that is the best you can do, is added.

Stalemate doesn't 'kill the king' at all.  Quite the opposite.  It is the height of incompetence that is lucky to even be rewarded with ½ a point.  You don't award a win in football to a team who hit the post in a 0-0 draw or the team who had 65% possession.  You don't award a win in tennis to the player who demolished his opponent 6-0 in 2 sets and lost the other three 7-6.  Why should there be reward for complete failure to achieve the one sole objective of the game?!

Hi glamdring,

I don't think you're considering the effects of stalemate on endgame theory. Because of the current rule, many endgames that could force a stalemate aren't played out. There's no incentive to do so. One game that was played out to stalemate was game 5 of the 1978 world championship. Korchnoi and Karpov disliked each other so strongly that both of them refused to talk to each other, so neither side claimed the 50-move draw. Korchnoi went on to prove his superiority by forcing a stalemate on move 124. There was no reward in it for him in the match... it was 0.5-0.5 just like a 50-move draw.  He did it to humiliate Karpov.

Korchnoi certainly didn't find this stalemate by incompetence.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068051

Kind regards,
David

Hi quadibloc,

Thanks for your reply. Yes that's a possibility. I don't know of any endgame studies that differentiate between draws and stalemates, and so I don't know, say, what percent of "book draw" endgames could actually give players the extra fraction of a point. What we need are stats from endgame tablebases that force stalemate as often as possible. If a high percent can reduce to stalemate, I would lean toward your 0.6 instead of my 0.8.  Until we have more info, I'm just trusting Lasker's intuition.

Kind regards,
David