It could help; but again since these are top players who are also highly influenced by comps, their major priority it seems is to play as accurately as they can. Risk taking could easily backfire, resulting in a lost game. It still doesn't meat that some wouldn't try, but after losing a game or two, they're very likely to go back to playing solid, drawish chess. At this level, riskier chess is not necessarily more successful.

That is like pulling off a trick play in American football in a meaningless pre-season game.

People keep on mentioning great players' names, it was a different era, a different age, a different time. Things change, chess change, styles of play and approaches/strategies change, with the advances in computer chess, where moves and moves (ahead) are analyzed why are you not expecting more draws??

Computers have already proven that tic-tac-toe is a drawn game. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved...

How long, do you expect, that chess will be proven to be a solved game, if played to absolute perfection? If you can see 50-ply deep, the game is and will always be, a drawn game.

In fact, the top players take risks all the time, in order to create subtle imbalances. Not great swashbuckling Tal-in-his-youth risks, but risks all the same. They could draw by playing ultra-solidly in every game, but they try for more.

I actually made the opposite mistake once, in my first tournament game for 16 years. I'd been practicing with engines, not always strong ones -- and I knew that computers, when losing, tend to throw away pawns in order to defer mate or serious loss.

So, game one vs a person, and I reach a near-winning position, with an attack, an extra pawn, positional superiority. And he offered me another pawn.

Still thinking in engine mode, I thought it was just desperation. I forgot that humans set traps -- I grabbed the pawn, and it cost me a Knight. And I still managed to draw, by carrying on the attack as if I'd planned the piece sac, so my opponent got worried.

MC: What do you want Vishy?

VA: Remember when I used to do those cute Monty Python imitations for you? Let you sit at my table, at the big tournaments?

MC: We have a chess game to play here, Vishy....

VA: Listen, Kid. How 'bout I get you a date with Ashwari Rai?

MC: Vishy, you couldn't get into her zip code, much less her burka. Make your move!

VA: Listen kid, I can give you all the orange juice in my hotel mini bar. No charge. We need to have a quiet game, here, I don't need the stress.

MC: But, I need a full point, to win this tournament!

VA: Oh, who cares. We both have our T-shirt money. And, you're next. I'm just keeping the place warm for you. I'm tired. Lets have a 14 move Petrov draw.

MC: Sorry champ. I'm in the mood for a wide open Sicilian!

VA: Kasparov told me that, during your duel training sessions, you were watching reruns of "Hanna Montana" on YouTube. Maybe I should let that slip out, during my next interview?

Let us take the role of 'seconds'... Granted, Bent really was nothing more than a sandwich-getter or middle-of-the-night-waker-upper (okay, tongue in cheeks here).

With computers, do(es) the role(s) of second become antiquated? Why call someone in for analysis? When you can leave Deep WannaBe running for 8 hours while you sleep?

If a GM is to prepare a line 15 moves deep, with all the 15... moves expected, what really have become of this game?

Perhaps, maybe, in another decade, maybe two, we will have the same discussion on 25... and given another few years after that, we'll be discussion 100... (By we, I don't mean you and I, but just us, in general.)

In another two decades, perhaps less, we will have so much computing powers, it would be ridiculous, the video game industry will put you in the middle of a battle field, (Hello, Holo-Deck!!)

http://capablancaspeedchessrecord.p...

<Capablanca's own attitude towards speed chess, from what is known, seems to have been somewhat ambivalent. As one report below states, he "...made light of it as a test of skill..." (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Thursday, July 19th, 1928, page 6A). Another interview shows what he thought of as its shortcomings:

[Helms] "There are so many drawn games nowadays. Especially is this so between grand masters. What's the remedy? A faster time limit?"

[Capablanca] "That's all nonsense." (A favorite expression with the champion.) "Those who know good chess will not complain. Faster chess means poorer chess. I'm not in that business. Leave that to the duds."

[Helms] "You have played much rapid-transit chess in your time. Was it helpful or otherwise?"

[Capablanca] "Yes and no. You can do too much of it."

(from the The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sunday, March 27th, 1927, page 6C, names in square brackets added by me)>

What is striking in this interview in relation to the topic of draws is that chess fans before WW2 were already complaining of too many GM draws (at a time when there was still no FIDE GM).

One solution that chess fans were also apparently proposing is to speed up the game. However, at rapid time limits, errors will significantly rise.

It is the nature of chess that if both players manage to avoid errors, the game will most likely end in a draw. The better the players, the less the errors, the more the draws.