| Feb-17-05 | | Hesam7: Ponomariov pre-arranged an 11th round draw with Aseev but then changed his mind one hour before the game. Therefore Aseev came to the game unprepared and angry, and lost. This unsportsmanlike behaviour has sparked a wave of condemnation and many have called for Ponomariov to be stripped of his silver medal and banned from playing in international events. Fortunately, Aseev still qualified for the World Championships. |
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| Feb-17-05 | | refutor: lol "unsportsmanlike" |
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| Mar-04-05 | | Hesam7: <refutor> I was just quoting from an interview with Emil Sutovsky. |
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| Mar-04-05 | | Shams: it IS very tacky, but on the other hand it`s not much worse than going ahead. Pre-arranging draws is dirty pool. |
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| Mar-04-05 | | zsystriker: Antoher example of the sorry state of the professional chess... These god-aweful number of draws is bad enough, but when these weasels pre-arrange draws, something's gotta be done. Too bad there isn't an authority powerful enough to suspend these two for a year or so from any competition... Can you imagine two coaches of any two teams of any professinal sports league agreeing to draw beforehand? As long as chess is plagued with weasels like these, it'll forever remain an esoteric game that it has become. (I apologize to all the weasels...) |
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| Mar-04-05 | | zsystriker: Obviously the problem is even deeper considering that the "codemnation" was directed at Ponomariov for breaking the agreement and not due to that fact that such agreement was made. Who the hell are these condemner? I'll bet they're the other players... It's their way of tacitly approving pre-arranged draws. It's disgusting. |
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| Mar-21-05 | | Hesam7: <shams>, <zsystriker>; IMO what Ponomariov did is much worse than a pre-arranged draw. |
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| Jan-09-09 | | KingG: Yeah, pretty low behaviour from Pono, although I don't think much of people who pre-arrange draws either. |
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| Jan-09-09 | | Akavall: I wonder how Sutovsky found out about the whole thing. Did Aseev come forward? It seems totally irrational on his part to do so, since he goes from being a just a "loser" to "loser" and "cheater". It's hard to imagine that he would do that. Otherwise I don't see Sutovsky (or anybody) could obtain this kind of information. Of course, prearranging a draw and backing out of an agreement is a very low behaivor. |
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| Feb-26-09 | | acirce: But prearranging a draw now and then is just normal. Most players have probably done that at least once. It's not like you are going to become ostracized by your colleagues or anything if you admit it. |
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Feb-28-09
 | | JointheArmy: It's a shame the prearranged draw nonsense is overshadowing some brilliant endgame technique by Ponomariov. |
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Jan-20-12
 | | chrisfalter: Andrew Martin analyzes this game on his very instructive DVD, "The ABC of the Benko Gambit." |
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| Apr-15-12 | | wordfunph: here's more from GM Sutovsky..
<I think that it's one of the greatest sins of a chess player. I was really surprised. We all know about pre-arranged draws. Okay, it's not legal, but it's a very minor sin. Even if it's not officially legal, it's quite okay and a normal situation for the chess world. Of course, a lot of players do it. I don't tend too much, I can recall a couple of times in three or four years and just with my good friends, or my trainer. But to refuse it just before the game! I know that Ponomariov went to him (Aseev) an hour before the game, but it smells bad. They agreed a draw at about 10:00 a.m. and at about 2 p.m. Ponomariov came to him and said 'Well, I have to play this game.' It was like an hour before the game, I heard it from Aseev himself. Ponomariov used the excuse that he had to consult his sponsor or something, but he's a big guy and he has to accept responsibility.> |
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| Apr-15-12 | | kardopov: It's tactic by Pono, and it's dirty! Pono grilled Aseev like a fish on a stick. Anyway, he's a good player though(with an obtrusive behavior). |
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| Apr-15-12 | | john2629: some years ago i played in a small international tournament me and 3-4 other players from my local team.In our discussions we agreed to fix draws in games were we are going to play between ourselves.In rnd 5 finally came such a game.my opponent was a 14 yo boy (i was 37),not so good in positional play but very good tactician.In a 1 or 3 min game there was no way to win him(actually he is winning even IM's and some GM's in internet games),but in normal tournament timers its another story :))
We agreed to draw in 15 moves,that just before starting the game.So i started with 1.b4 just for the fun of it!
After 15 moves where i was in better position he whisper to me : draw ? i wisper back to him to play 2-3 moves more. The position was quite interesting so i wanted to continue a bit.He looked at me with a spark of disbelief in his eyes! But 2 more moves and we agreed draw in 17th move.It was the right thing to do and there was no way to do anything else than draw even in a winning position.After the game and analysing it with engines i found only +0.60 for white after 17 moves.So draw was quite possible even without arrange. |
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| Apr-24-12 | | Everett: <john2629> so, the <right thing to do> was to follow through on the agreed-to arranged draw? that's a very interesting ethical conclusion. |
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| Apr-16-13 | | The Last Straw: We all agree pre-arranged draws are bad, but this isn't a good way to stop them!
Cheating someone is far worse than just simply arranging a draw for only ONE game. |
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| Apr-16-13 | | Petrosianic: I heard a story once where two players had agreed to pre-arrange a draw with by repetition from the opening, with 1. N-KB3 N-KB3 2. N-N1 N-N1 3. N-KB3 N-KB3, et cetera. But Black got greedy, and after 4. N-N1, played P-K4, with a decided edge, and there was nobody White could complain to. In the Book of Chess Lists, there's a game from a Portuguese Junior Championship, in which two players agreed to draw and didn't care who knew it. They pre-arranged an entire long game in which both sides gave up one pawn and all their pieces, and promoted each of their other 7 pawns, in order to end up with a final position where each side had his pieces set up as if in the opening position, but on the opposite side of the board. Winning a game through false pretenses is worse than drawing one, so once the deal is made, sticking to it seems like the lesser of two evils. Of course even that can lead to misunderstandings, like in the 1975 US Championship, when Reshevsky thought he'd pre-arranged a draw with Benko, only Benko didn't know about it. Reshevsky had told Benko before the round that if Rogoff lost, he'd be going for the win, so he could make the interzonal, but if Rogoff drew, he'd take a draw too. Benko wanted to win to stay out of last place, but Reshevsky thought that he and he alone could play for a win but take a draw whenever he wanted. Benko admitted that the conversation took place but denied agreeing to anything. From his point of view, Reshevsky simply put him on notice that he wouldn't take a draw if Rogoff was losing. Actually, if you want to play Devil's Advocate, you could make the case that pre-arranged draws should not be illegal at all. Given that both players can agree to a draw on Move 1, before they're even out of the book, how much different is it if they agree one move earlier? Better that they should agree to draws with no play at all, rather than clutter up the databases with 9 move non-games. Maybe it's a natural consequence of the rule that players can agree to simply give each other half points (in what other sport can that happen?). |
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Kibitzing
