I was reading on Chessbase about the Biel 2011, which Magnus Carlson won, and was intrigued by the scoring system:
Win = 3 points
Draw = 1 point
Loss = 0 points.
I know there have been many attempts to try and entice grandmasters to play for more wins. I was curious to know how widespread this particular scoring system is being used by FIDE.
There are plenty of alternative scoring systems, those have been covered in other posts over the years on the forum. I’m fairly sure this scoring systems has been used in the past for some FIDE tournaments, but since I came across it again, that piqued my curiosity on how often it was being used.
I wouldn’t advocate it for normal tournaments, but definately would have its benefits for smaller high end tournaments in which is limited to mostly grandmasters, where games have a high probability of being drawn.
This is how soccer does things, and it seems to work well. The mentality there is that the home team should be looking for a win, while the away team considers it a victory if they can land a draw.
It’s a nice change of pace, but one wonders how much of an effect it would actually have over time? If white=home and black=away, we could see a situation where black-- knowing she is starting off at a disadvantage-- may try to steer games into drawish lines in the hopes of securing the point. After all, there is a greater risk in losing since it means gaining zero points while your opponent gains three. Most people are risk-averse, and if you’re starting at a disadvantage, the natural inclination would be to salvage the point.
That said, I think it has potential. Ultimately, it could make the game much more interesting from the fan’s perspective and perhaps that would be worth fundamentally altering how players approach tournament and match play.
There’s enough experience with it now at top GM events that it should be possible to start forming conclusions.
Some games are just draws. I’m quite convinced that the starting position of chess is a draw, so if the opponent never makes a losing mistake, one cannot win.
The way this works out is that one still gets quite a few draws even under this rule, because a draw is better than a loss. Are there significantly less draws? Are the draws more exciting, because the players are going for the most unbalanced in their choices of candidate moves? At least in chess I think it should be more effective than in soccer …
Watching the soccer World Cup, I didn’t get the impression that people were playing differently because of this rule, and indeed in soccer there isn’t much you can do. On the defensive end you do everything to stop the opponent. On the offensive end you do everything to score a goal. Your players at one end are not the same as the players at the other. You’ll never pull your goalie in a tie game even with this rule. So what effect does it have?
Indeed, there are still a lot of ties in the World Cup qualification rounds where this rule is applied. It’s just bad luck if your opponent happens to have the same number of goals as you do.
Two concerns come to mind involving the use of this system for chess:
The 3/1/0 scoring system (same as a draw counting 1/3 point for each player rather than 1/2) increases incentives for collusion, to the point it would be unusable in double round robins. “You throw your game as Black to me, and I’ll throw my game as Black to you.” For other types of tournaments, the necessary contracts involve more parties and are less obvious, maybe less prevalent.
Ratings still assume a draw is half as good as a win. So if one is striving for the maximum expected score in a tournament, that is likely to be incompatible with striving for the maximum expected post-tournament rating. Which will the players care more about? I’m sure the answer is “it depends”: Is the player in contention for a big money prize? What score is needed to be invited back next year? Is his rating 2698 and he only needs two rating points to cross 2700? etc. Even under present circumstances, the player may play in a way that is incompatible with maximum expected rating, but the 3/1/0 system is likely to increase those occurrences and introduce some added noise in the rating system.
The solution for soccer is 2 less players per team on the field. That should open the game up to allow more
one-on-one play, more completed offensive passing and a little less of a defensive mob in front of the goalie which should bring the overall scoring up a little.
In the most recent NIC magazine, a letter by Michael Basman promotes the use of the 3-1-1 scoring system with his rationale for it.
There is an additional letter suggesting that for championships the format should be a three player final. Games would take place every day, with one player sitting out. There would be incentive for the other players to play for more than a draw if the sitting player was in the lead. Interesting conceptual approach to add more interest to chess.