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Jul-03-08
 | | Marmot PFL: If they really want to cut down draws the simplest idea is to use the 3-1-0 scoring system commonly used in football (soccer). 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss. This definitely puts the premium on sharper play and more willingness to take some risks. I have been advocating this for years to deaf ears evidently. |
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| Jul-03-08 | | Inf: As long as Topa or Magnus (or both) are not on same tour, keep counting those draws! |
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| Jul-03-08 | | cannibal: <Marmot PFL: If they really want to cut down draws the simplest idea is to use the 3-1-0 scoring system commonly used in football (soccer). 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss. This definitely puts the premium on sharper play and more willingness to take some risks. I have been advocating this for years to deaf ears evidently.> First of all: no, not to deaf ears. They plan to play the Bilbao "Grand Slam" that way (obviously a Danailov stunt to let Topalov win one finally). Second of all, your opinion in all honour, but in my humble one, 3-1-0 for CHESS is the biggest fooking @#$% EVER, and if it has any influence on the outcome of Bilbao, I'm gonna ignore this tournament. Can't they just let people play the game, and stop introducing on PR stunt after another? And the analogy with soccer makes me laugh a bit. Chess, unlike soccer, has an objective result, and that result is most likely a draw. And more often than not lots of draws indicates high playing level. 3-1-0 might be great for few extremely tactical players, And maybe it's gonna produce more "risk" (sorry, but even now, if you wanna win the tournament, you have to take some risk), but in general it will simply provoke weaker chess. There are already enough other methods for this, really (shortened time controls, super-tight schedules etc.) I don't know anyway why people keep complaining about the draw rate here. It's not that bad at all, and if it were, it wouldn't be statistically relevant, after just 16 games played. And the number of unfought draws is also quite low. Ivanchuk-Nepo was one, okay. Kramnik-Leko wasn't, no matter what some people say. It simply got stuck after a while. That's what happens with chess games on this level. Some people round here should take a look at some old championship games, really. |
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Jul-03-08
 | | OneArmedScissor: And the outcome of a football game does not have an objective result? |
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| Jul-03-08 | | yadig: Dortmund sucks. |
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| Jul-03-08 | | yadig: Van Wely... no words. |
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Jul-03-08
 | | SetNoEscapeOn: <objective result>
I think by this he means that the game of chess has an ultimate truth behind it- whereas the game of soccer really is unbounded, chess does have the concept of "perfect play" and the result of perfect play is (most likely; we don't know yet) a draw. |
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| Jul-03-08 | | Illogic: <I can post countless other examples of fighting draws. The point is that like Carmelo Anthony, chess players sometimes "give up," and don't feel like playing.> It's not as simple as that. Most of the time they don't get anything out of the opening, don't fancy their chances of a win, and prefer to take the draw. Should they press on and fight for wins? Most of us would say so, but we're not in their shoes. If they overpress and end up with a -3 tournament, their rating is damaged, and after finishing at the bottom, will they ever get an invite again? Yes, there is Van Wely who seems to have a lifetime exemption in all these tournaments, but there are plenty of very strong GMs who had one or two bad tournaments and have never been seen again. Blame the current system in the top level tournaments, where invites are more important to the players' livelihoods than the actual results. Blame the fact that theory is so far advanced that most openings can be snuffed out to a dead draw easily. If you can come up with answers to these problems, then say something, but people, please drop the same old bitching about lazy players and what not. (I don't mean you in particular, apple, just all the broken-record whiners here) |
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| Jul-03-08 | | dumbgai: Maybe chess players who like to play unfought draws to avoid the risk of losing should have picked a different career instead. You know, one where you're guaranteed a fixed annual salary. Why take the much bigger risk of being a chess professional, and then be afraid to take (relatively smaller) risks in actual games? |
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Jul-03-08
 | | acirce: I always find it curious how people go on about this horrible "problem" as if it's only top players who act like perfectly normal pragmatic human beings. I can't think of anyone in my club, for example, who would never take "lazy draws" or whatever it's called - because they are tired, because they have a headache, because it suits them in the tournament situation, because they simply don't feel like playing right then, because they want to gain easy rating points, because they get nervous, because they just think playing on is too risky, because they prefer to play the position out in a nice friendly post-mortem analysis, or for any other reason you can think of. But once you reach a certain playing level, you're supposed to be an altruistic entertainment machine whose main duty in the world is to satisfy some people's desire for constant blood-letting and "excitement". Yes, on this level they are usually getting paid to play, but as long as what they are paid to do does not specify a certain amount of "fighting", it makes no sense to blame them for not playing every game down to bare kings. And as other more reasonable people have said, it's all much overstated anyway. Out of the games in this tournament so far, only a few can be said to have been "unfought draws". |
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Jul-03-08
 | | alexmagnus: <acirce> I never played draw at all, let alone unfought. And I have to say, on a low level it's very rare. The rate of unfought draws on the low level is around some tenths of percent, while on GM level it's around ten percent, that is <hundred times more>... |
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Jul-03-08
| | Marmot PFL: <cannibal> I wasn't one of those complaining about the draw rate, but, in response to those who were i proposed a rational, workable solution which I think at least deserves to be tried. Lots of draws may indicate a high playing level, though you offered no proof of that. It also may show lack of courage or incentive to win (especially short draws), or as Andrew Karklins has suggested, draws often come about through missed opportunities. If either or both sides have chances they fail to exploit than the advantage usually evaporates and a draw is the likely outcome. Finally, if Tal was correct and chess is 95% (or whatever) tactics, than why shouldn't enterprising tactical play be rewarded? Many of his sacrifices were objectively dubious, and even unsound, but produced beautiful combinations and memorable games. |
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Jul-03-08
| | acirce: <alexmagnus> Depends on how low of course. I don't know your level or how much you play, but never to have played a draw at all must be rather unusual :) |
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Jul-03-08
| | alexmagnus: <acirce> My level is somewhere around 1400-1500, my drawless score is based on some 20 tournament games (I very rarely play tournemants, spending most of time playing internet rapids and blitz, where my only draws are so called "time draws" (winning/losses on time with the winner having unsufficient mating material). |
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| Jul-03-08 | | Udit Narayan: I can relate to that. Of the more than 2 thousand games I've played on Yahoo, only around 20 have been drawn. |
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Jul-03-08
| | acirce: <alexmagnus> It's funny how things can turn out. I know a player rated around 1700 (Swedish rating) who had 11 draws in a row last year. Myself, I seem to make about 45-50% draws on average. Of these, I imagine maybe a fourth to a third would be considered 'unfought' by chessgames.com standards. |
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| Jul-03-08 | | najdorfman: acirce,
There are ways for tournament organizers to provide incentives for
fewer draws to occur without altering the traditional scoring system of results. The 1996 New York International (won by Michael Adams) had essentially two prize funds. The second fund paid cash for WINS. Thus some players who won (and lost) more games than others who played mostly draws--took home more money. The players who drew a lot of their games and thereby scored more points overall than others who played more games with decisive outcomes, ended up with less prize money. In short, one win and one loss was more economically rewarding than two (or perhaps even three or four) draws. |
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Jul-03-08
 | | PhilFeeley: I don't mind draws all the time: sometimes they are a logical outcome of a well-played game. But in this tournament, with so many "rest days" there've been far too many draw. Even more than that, far too many short ones. |
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| Jul-03-08 | | Voltaic: i don't know how many agree, but frankly they should get ride of Wely and Kramnik at Dortmund, and bring on Magnus or Topalov, those two always fight hard and make things interesting, ok they can lose/win/draw, but you can be sure they're gonna go for other's players neck with all his will. and they make other players play. they may not be so "perfect" as Kramnik but heck, they really know how to complicate things at the board, i know the organizers will not hear the voice of another chess fan, but well just my two cents on this exciting tournament :) |
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| Jul-03-08 | | DukeAlba: <I don't mind draws all the time: sometimes they are a logical outcome of a well-played game.> Are you then implying that a game that does not end in a draw was a game that was not well played? You can argue that a decisive game either 1-0 or 0-1 came as a result of someone blundering. But in effect a draw is not perfect play. A draw is simply a game in which both sides agreed to stop playing before any blunders where allowed to occur. The only type of draws that should exist are stalemates or draws by lack of force... The problem is that drawing has become VERY acceptable nowadays. It has become so common among top level players that its considered fine. And this takes away from the competitiveness of the game. Its hard for me to imagine that an atmosphere in which winning is not a priority can possibly be conducive to competitiveness... IMO. |
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| Jul-03-08 | | offtherook: <The only type of draws that should exist are stalemates or draws by lack of force...> Those are the only draws that I play, but only because I am a patzer playing against other patzers, and my opponents are too stubborn to acknowledge a draw until we're down to bare kings. I've won several games off of stubborn opponents who insisted on playing on in dead drawn positions and eventually did something stupid to prevent the game from drawing. Why shouldn't GMs be able to look at a position that is obviously drawn and mutually agree not to waste their time playing it out? |
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| Jul-03-08 | | DukeAlba: <Why shouldn't GMs be able to look at a position that is obviously drawn and mutually agree not to waste their time playing it out?> That's perfectly acceptable. But the problem is that GM's are drawing games like the one between Ivan and Nepo which ended in move 19... I fail to believe that that game had no more life in it... |
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Jul-03-08
 | | Annie K.: <Voltaic: <i don't know how many agree, but frankly they should get ride of Wely and Kramnik at Dortmund, and bring on Magnus or Topalov>> You'll see Topalov at Dortmund when you see Kramnik at MTel. :p Would be fun though... ;) |
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| Jul-04-08 | | whiskeyrebel: It amazes me how worked up some of you draw hating, "virtuous" fighting chess advocates get. I bet most of you could benefit from minding your own business and focusing on your own game. Short draws? who cares. "Fighting chess" my fanny. A point is a point. If a half point puts bread on a titled players table, more power to him or her. |
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| Jul-04-08 | | square dance: <whiskeyrebel> nicely put. not to mention there's been no reason to complain about kramnik's draws in this tournament. his 22 move game with leko was a fully played out game. the position turned into a repetition. its not like he and leko played 22 moves of theory and shook hands, or even worse, played into an interesting middle game and shook hands. no, they played a complex struggle. kramnik gave up a pawn, but never got anything for it. well done by leko. if people want to complain about short, unfought draws thats one thing, but all this complaining <EVERY SINGLE TIME> kramnik scores 1/2 a point is, well, trollishly stupid. |
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