Claim Draws in Drawn Endgame

I suppose the logic would be that it's respectful of your opponent's time to allow the draw. If I have a 5 min to 2 min time advantage and try to blitz out the win, I probably have a less than 1% chance of winning in that game. I even have some chance of losing I suppose. If I have a 1 min to 10 sec time advantage though, I have a much better chance of winning. So I don't know if these cutoffs are arbitrary, but they may be personal.

The key item is that sportsmanship is often related to respecting your opponent's time in chess. If I'm in a turn-based game which is an obvious draw, I might look at my opponent's available vacation time and then try to figure out the chance that he ends up losing on time because he doesn't have any vacation time left. Maybe if he has 30 days left, like me, I take a draw. Maybe if he has 23 hrs left, I might think it's a good idea to prolong the game as long as possible, hoping he'll have a real life event which forces him to lose many games on time. Or maybe he'll just grow bored with having to login every 3 days just to make moves here. Maybe he gets burned out. One can make whatever argument one wants, but the relationship of respect for opponent's time and sportsmanship is very clear.

Deciding tournament wins with "armageddon games" seems to be rewarding precisely the player who "pushes wood" faster. We can decide that we don't want to do that, but then I think we need to change the nature of the game being played, which has been suggested re adding time per move. If you are playing a lightning fast, sudden death game, then the fastest wood pusher may well be the ultimate winner.

armageddon games must have a winner because how they are defined. draw goes to black. This is not the case here. The only parallel that can be drawn is a blitz game with a large rating difference. for the higher-rated player, a draw is almost like half a loss. A draw is not just a draw.

"Does it really make sense to decide an otherwise drawn game with relatively even clocks based purely on who can push wood faster?"

If the answer to this is "no" then why are there any games under 30-40+ minutes? pretty much any game with less time than that (give or take) requires one to play fairly quickly hence the time is an important factor. why should it not be important in drawn games only? you still did not answer anything except pose a question that does not give any reason. like i already stated, my reason is the time is a factor which is legitimate to claim a win/loss in any other situation, but for some reason you just say it shouldn't be so in drawn positions. therefore, pushing wood is an important part of faster games, so why exclude that with draws only? anand is praised for playing fast even in long games. isn't it a skill to outplay an opponent quickly? why be punished for having this skill over your opponent because the position is drawn? i don't know. i just don't understand.

"Does it really make sense to encourage or incentivise players to make the attempt at the expense of consideration for their opponent's time?"

again, if the answer to this question is "no" then why are there any games under 30-40+ minutes if not to include the time factor into the game? again, if time factors into a win/loss in a non-drawn position it is considered legitimate (and i assume everyone agrees with that since i already mentioned it and it was not questioned). you simply are just saying that in drawn positions time should not matter, but you are not saying why it is different for draws.

Having once got to an rook v rook endgame, (not on this website though) I refused to settle for a draw, (eventually it was a draw anyway because of the 50 moves without advancement rule.)  The reason being is because a rook is still enough to win (provinding of course your opponent blunders their rook.) 

By the way the rook v rook ending I played was probably one of the most boring end games to chess I have ever played.  It was basically involving moving the rook so the King can be in check with the other player zigzagging across the board to the rook until I needed to move the rook completly away from the king, with my opponent then doing the same for 50 moves! 

I'm saying that while I acknowlege the important role of time management, I'm hard pressed to understand why anyone wants to play a game where the goal shifts from playing the position to playing the clock when there's not a large disparity in the clocks.

I single out theoretically drawn positions because that's the topic the original poster addressed, and it's also the only one that can be reasonably detected and acted upon with an automated mechanism.

What on earth is a "help mate?" 

Where do you draw the line?

If I use up more time than my opponent to reach a theoretically drawn position after 60 moves, you want it adjudged a draw. What about after 50, moves, or 40, 30, 20, 10 or 1 e4 e5?

Time is a resource, like material. Dont run out.

When chess degenerates into a game of hot-potato something has gone wrong.

so when you are losing and you try to make your opponents clock run down to get the win it is unsportsmanlike?

if yes, then i can't disagree with you any more. we are at an impasse.

if no, then how and why is it different in drawn position? you are only stating arbitrary time cutoffs for when you personally feel it should be allowed in accordance to your opinion about "the relationship of respect for opponent's time and sportsmanship."

i honestly just don't get why it's different for draws or arbitrary time cutoffs but legitimate in all other aspects. it seems like people are just saying "because we're supposed to feel that way in those situations". well i guess i must be in the wrong because i don't feel that way...??

I don't think I made my point clearly. I'm suggesting that when you impose a format on a game in which a very short time control is a big feature, then that format necessarily makes ability to take advantage of the clock a big part of success.

I don't think the principle is limited to short time controls, however, but rather just depends on one player's ability to take advantage of the remaining time. For example, if a game is being played at long time controls has reached an endgame position that is objectively drawn but one player has 20 seconds on his clock and the other has 3 minutes, does anyone think it is illegitimate for the player with 3 minutes to continue making moves in the hopes that he can win on time? What about 2 minutes and 20 minutes?

If I could market a type of chess match in which the players have to make their moves with an extremely angry weasel tied to their necks, it would hardly be legitimate for someone to complain that his opponent only won because he was better able to fight off the weasel and was not the better chess player. If you're dumb enough to play in Duffer's Weasel Match, then you have to accept that battling a weasel is how to win, even if objectively that doesn't have much to do with chess.

who said anything about degeneration??

i'm merely suggesting that automatic draws in certain positions does not seem like a good idea to me especially when the main reason it is being called for is due to time regulations not being a legitimate factor specifically in drawn positions only. it seems a little ambitious imho. by not accepting these automatic draw things, i don't see chess simply "degenerating".

lol i like that. simple put, time is a factor. it seems very odd to say that it shouldn't be, under specific circumstances (i.e. draws), because that's sportsmanship.

There are allowances in tournament play for when this occurs.  It's when the focus shifts from advancing the position to playing the clock (especially without an actual lead in time) that they have "degenerated".  In tournament play these games can be arbitrated -- at chess.com they currently cannot.

Tangential interjection:  The time controls used in Shogi (as I understand them) could be interesting and avoid the (perceived) problem of winning by running out the opponent's clock:

Time limits are much longer than in International Chess (9 hours a side plus extra time in the prestigious Meijin title match), and in addition byōyomi (literally "second counting") is employed. This means that when the ordinary time has run out, the player will from that point on have a certain amount of time to complete every move (a byōyomi period), typically upwards of one minute. The final ten seconds are counted down, and if the time expires the player to move loses the game immediately. Amateurs often play with electronic clocks that beep out the final ten seconds of a byōyomi period, with a prolonged beep for the last five.
(from Wikipedia)

In brief, I believe each player gets X minutes for the game, and after those X minutes are up, they get Y seconds for each move.  (As an example, you could give a player 90 minutes for the game, and after those 90 minutes are used up, 30 seconds for each move.)  Fischer time is somewhat like this, but the Shogi system ensures that a player can always make a move -- he just might not have much time to think about what that next move will be.  But in clearly drawn games, this should eliminate any possibility of playing the clock to win (or in positions where the person with an inferior position has more time, for that matter).

so you would answer yes to "when you are losing and you try to make your opponents clock run down to get the win it is unsportsmanlike?" because it does not seem like this reason of "degeneration" has anything to do with drawn positions.

i do not understand what you are referring to exactly. are all the tournament games in drawn positions and everyone is simply trying to win on time? if no, then we are discussing different issues. if yes, then i would suggest that you are simply stating an obvious example of how playing quickly is an important skill (since it seems to be a factor in many tournament games according to you) and therefore one shouldn't be punished in giving up a win on time simply because the game is in a drawn position and in a time crunch (hell there are tons of games in time crunches you say). you did not mention any reasons around this issue, so i still don't understand why we should all feel this way.

I would agree with your point to the extent that a player is not taking advantage of his having played better to gain a time advantage. If you have reached a drawn positon in the same time as your opponent then I can see that playing the clock seems like a cheap trick. My prior comments assumed that one was leveraging an advantage -- more time -- gotten by better play.

I would point out, however, that I recently saw a chessbase.com article referred to someone trying "a Carlsen," which it defined as in drawn position continuing to play but doing so extremely aggressively in the hope that your opponent will make a mistake and you can win.

• Playing the clock when you have an actual lead in time is not unsportsmanlike
• Playing aggressively to try to force a blunder when in a drawn position is presumably advancing the position (and risking blunder yourself) and is also not unsportsmanlike
• Playing the clock when you don't have an actual lead in time with the sole intent of winning on time is where chess degenerates into something that isn't really chess (more akin to hot-potato).
• Drawn positions are singled out, as I said earlier, because they are the ones that can reasonably be detected and acted upon automatically not because it's any more or less unsportsmanlike than an imbalanced position, and also because they tend to be the positions where the risks associated with blindly pushing wood are minimal (K+R vs K+R is a perfect example where the calculation required to avoid a blunder is elementary).

"Playing the clock when you have an actual lead in time is not unsportsmanlike"

so "actual lead" does not include time for you obviously, but i don't know why. how is that so in a time dependent game? and why do draws not count in this scenario. again, you give no reasons. obviously playing fast is a skill and involves skill and is praised in many regards. why not so for you in some situations (such as when an "actual" lead is not present)?

"Playing aggressively to try to force a blunder when in a drawn position is presumably advancing the position (and risking blunder yourself) and is also not unsportsmanlike"

agreed.

"Playing the clock when you don't have an actual lead in time with the sole intent of winning on time is where chess degenerates into something that isn't really chess (more akin to hot-potato)."

now this i don't understand. so when you're winning you can use the time to your benefit (like you stated in your first point) but when you are losing you can't? i am lost and again you give no reasons for me except that you state it  "degenerates chess" in your opinion. how is using everything at your disposal to win make chess degenerate? if you don't want time effecting the outcome of games, then why have any time regulations? again, obviously time is an important factor be it winning, losing, or in drawn positions.

"Drawn positions are singled out, as I said earlier, because they are the ones that can reasonably be detected and acted upon automatically not because it's any more or less unsportsmanlike than an imbalanced position, and also because they tend to be the positions where the risks associated with blindly pushing wood are minimal (K+R vs K+R is a perfect example where the calculation required to avoid a blunder is elementary)."

so time limits should be ignored in drawn positions because it's easy to see a drawn position? but why do it at all? why does the simplicity of understanding the position affect whether time regulations and restrictions should factor towards a win/loss/draw?

i am not trying to be mean in any way. i really just want to understand your position because i obviously don't get it. and i apologize if i'm coming off as angry. i am simply a philosophy grad with way too much time on his hands who enjoys debating ;)

Sportsmanlike behavior will defy being pinned down to a meaning. To wit:

• a behavior can be unsportsmanlike to one person and not to another
• a behavior can be unsportsmanlike when one person does it but not when another does
• a behavior can be unsportsmanlike or not depending on the mood of the recipient
• a behavior can be unsportsmanlike for years and then change to be not unsportsmanlike