Draw-Offer Harrassment

Running Chess Tournaments
1

Let me preface by saying I’m not against draws, even draws by agreement. I don’t even have a strong feeling against pre-arranged draws. And as for certain people who promote a “final solution to the draw problem” that entails destroying the village in order to save it (pardon me for mixing images from two different wars) … solutions that would transform chess into an entirely different game by redefining its ultimate objectives (what constitutes winning and losing – i.e. make stalemate a win, or make a draw count as +1/3 point for Black and minus-Sqrt(2) for White, and the like) … Well, I have elsewhere offered my own modest proposal that such people should come down with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy – if indeed they don’t already have it.

OK, now that that’s out of the way, here is why I’m posting this. I refer to June Chess Life, page 29, part of the coverage of the U.S. Championship: “Dmitry (Gurevich) was clearly thrown off by draw offers from his opponent, which under extreme time pressure can have an awful effect on even the most experienced grandmaster. Regardless of whether this was within the rules, there needs to be a mechanism for adding some time to the clock when such offers lead to unfair competitive conditions.”

Since I am not a TD, I cannot quote “the rules” chapter and verse. The way I have seen it explained, it is improper to REPEAT a draw offer – that is, for the same player whose previous draw proposal was rejected, to offer a draw again on a subsequent move, unless the situation has changed significantly in the interim. Furthermore, since “the situation has changed significantly” is obviously a murky formulation, a TD once explained that a repeat draw offer was allowable only if the player’s opponent had in the interim offered a draw that was rejected by the player who now wished to offer a draw for a second time himself.

It appears that such rules, if indeed they exist, are never enforced. They should be. And if existing rules aren’t clear, they should be clarified.

I can’t tell from Chess Life’s wording just how many times Akobian offered Gurevich a draw, or in just what positions (or for that matter if the offer was even made more than once). But on principle, the situation the writer described cries out for a more active approach on the part of TDs.

I once faced an opponent who offered a draw on 4 or 5 consecutive moves, starting from move 7 or so. He only shut up after I complained to the TD, who warned him about the behavior. (This same player went on to earn fame as a big-time cheater who got caught receiving moves from an accomplice via cell-phone in the final round of a big-money class section; I believe he may subsequently have been banned from USCF play as a result of an ethics complaint.)

I wasn’t in time pressure then, so he didn’t succeed in throwing off my concentration. But in the case of Gurevich-Akobian, and in the online chess situations described below, time pressure was involved, which makes the offense more serious, and (I would hope) harder for officials to justify ignoring.

Although I believe that’s the only time this ever happened to me in over-the-board play, I constantly face this type of unsportsmanlike, and very likely illegal, behavior when playing online. Such draw-offer harrassment nearly always starts as soon as one’s opponent has blundered away a bishop, rook, etc. But even a well-staffed, serious online chess server (ICC) rejected my complaint about an opponent’s repeated draw offers. ICC’s own published rules define “conduct” violations to include “making repeated draw offers in a lost position” (that may not be the exact wording, but it’s close)…yet their arbiter, who had a transcript of the game I was complaining about that included the times of all the draw offers made, simply told me, “It’s not improper to offer a draw.”

So, I’d like to call all you TDs’ attention to that otherwise obscure passage in Chess Life’s coverage of the Championship, in hopes that more people will recognize that such behavior should be penalized when it occurs.

As far as online chess, if I am correct that repeating a draw offer is illegal, then where are the programmers? Why is it even physically possible for a player on a site known for state-of-the-art-software like ICC or Playchess, to offer a draw a queen down on move 33, then again on move 34, then move 35…The software doesn’t allow a move that places your king in check; so why does it allow illegal repeat draw offers? (This is a rhetorical question, I realize it’s not an issue for USCF…but it is at least tangentially relevant to OTB tournament practice.)

2

There is. 14B5, Repeated offers. “Repeated draw offers may be construed as annoying the opponent, and penalties are possible at the discretion fo the TD (20G). If the first offer has been declined, it is improper to offer another draw unless the opponent has since offered a draw or the position has changed substantially.”

Two comments: 1) Any such TD intervention should almost always require a request by the offended player. Except in the most egregious cases, it is not up to the TD to decide what the player finds disturbing. 2) I was not present in San Diego, so I cannot comment on the specific case. I will say that, in general, this sort of complaint usually amounts to the post-game moaning of a disappointed player. Offering a draw – once – is permitted by the rules, and a player has no right to complain of being disturbed by it, even if he is in time pressure.

Perhaps Robert Tanner (the Chief TD) would care to comment.

3

I agree with everything you said. As for the incident cited in Chess Life, it would be interesting to see more details aired … but I’m not out to pillory either GM Akobian or the arbiter(s) at the Championship. In other words, I’m not asking anyone to justify their action or inaction, let alone calling for some retrospective sanction to be applied. I’d just like to raise this kind of thing to a higher level on TDs’ personal radar screens, for the future. Then, there’ll be less chance that a serial draw-offeror can think or say he’s done nothing wrong. After all, you never hear an opponent say after a touch-move violation, “I can touch any piece I want, and then move any piece I want” – do you? I’d like it to be the same for repeat draw offers.

Then again, maybe I should be careful what I wish for. Touch-move violations are pretty common at all levels, even though every perpetrator knows he’s breaking a rule and can get away with it only if his opponent is the only witness. (I’m excluding the under-800 scholastic crowd here: I consider them not tournament chess players, but rather an accounting fiction that pumps up USCF “membership” numbers so we can delude ourselves into thinking we’re doing a decent job of fulfilling USCF’s mission statement.) And as I said in my initial post, repeat draw offers – in my experience at least – seem to be extremely rare in rated OTB play (albeit maddeningly frequent in online play).

4

I don’t play online much so I can’t comment on that, but I have had a number of cases where a player has made repeated draw offers. Most of the times they occur in close positions where a draw may ultimately be the final result. Two offers I will say no and leave it at that. By the 3rd offer I will say to my opponent “If I want a draw I will offer one so please don’t ask me again.” That usually ends it. I don’t think I’ve gotten a 4th offer.

If my opponent is a kid, after the game I will explain that it’s not good sportmanship to repeatedly ask for a draw, especially when one is losing. I have had kids offer me draws when they’re down a piece.

I won’t have this discussion with an adult opponent unless he is unrated. Adults should know better. Kids sometimes forget that playing with adults is different. A friendly little reminder about sportsmanship can be helpful.

5

Personally, I have witnessed more cases of deliberate unsportsmanship by adults, some of them rated Expert or higher, than I have seen in all the scholastic tournaments I’ve run or visited.

6

Notice I said Should know better with the emphasis on should. I do find for the most part kids in adult tournaments are respectful, and may offer a draw when down just see if the opponent will be nice.

Annoying draw offers pale in comparision to the deliberate cheating I’ve seen at some of the major events. Rating doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to that type of behavior, though I think it’s more prevalent at the higher levels.

7

The problem of Repeated draw offers is solvable by simple rule changes. But people do not like change.

[1]
Contrary to what your TD told you, there is no rule barring a player from making a second draw offer before his opponent makes an intervening draw offer: but there could be such a rule. I see no downside to such a rule change, and it would solve the problem.

[1b] Alternatively, I would like a rule that extends by one move-pair the lifetime of a draw offer. That would make it risky to offer a draw in a position that still had life. Your opponent could make a speculative complicating move that can be refuted, but which might instead cause you to make an error (bad move in reply), giving your opponent winning chances. The new inherent risk would prevent excessive repeated draw offers.

Plus, I bet the average number of moves per game would increase, and the draw rate would decrease. And no ON-the-board rule would be changed.

[2]
Understandably you called for more active rule enforcement from TD’s. But TD’s are people, and they dislike enforcement confrontations same as we all do. I would prefer rules be designed to reduce the need and potential for confrontation, while also solving the problem.

Thus in my opinion, the vague style of rule you found and quoted – “unless the situation has changed significantly” – is a warning flag that a bad rule may have been written (I think you and I agree on that). Vagueness leads to interpretation effort and complexity. Plus it raises the potential for interpretation conflict.

The two rule change options described above would reduce or eliminate the problem, without telling TD’s they have more unpleasant confronting being demanded of them.

[3]
BTWay, the rules should emphasize that all draw offers need to be notated on the scoresheet just as much as any move does (“D.O.” or whatever).

Thanks.

8

Well, one existing rule that SHOULD be enforced is totally unambiguous and not subject to interpretation – namely, that the draw offer is part of the move. The proper procedure is to make the move, offer the draw, and press the clock, in that order.

This would prevent either player from bothering the other too much with draw offers. The offer could be made at most once per move, and on the offerer’s time. The opponent can then simply ignore it if he wishes.

If a player offers a draw after he has pressed the clock – and especially if he keeps badgering his opponent during the move – then THAT is a clear violation.

Bill Smythe

9

Johnybear Said:

“(I’m excluding the under-800 scholastic crowd here: I consider them not tournament chess players, but rather an accounting fiction that pumps up USCF “membership” numbers so we can delude ourselves into thinking we’re doing a decent job of fulfilling USCF’s mission statement.)”

at what point were most good players not beginners…I teach scholastic chess and disagree that a 500 player can not be a competitive tournament player…you must start from somewhere…and many of these u-800 players are severely underrated, and have jumped 100s of points after playing in non-scholastic events…

10

Gene M said:

“[1] …there is no rule barring a player from making a second draw offer before his opponent makes an intervening draw offer…”

Earlier in this thread, John Hillery, who sounds like one of the most knowledgeable regulars here on the forums, posted the specific rule language and citation. It conformed exactly with what was in my initial post: that a second draw offer IS improper UNLESS the opponent has made an intervening draw offer that was refused, OR unless the position on the board has changed significantly in the interim.

"[1b] Alternatively, I would like a rule that extends by one move-pair the lifetime of a draw offer. That would make it risky to offer a draw in a position that still had life. …"

I debated this idea with someone who proposed it on a chess blog (I think that person wanted the new rule to make draw offer stay in place for 3 move-pairs, or perhaps even longer). The conclusion was that, rather than posing a simpler alternative to banning draws-by-agreement altogether, such a rule more likely would require MORE TD intervention than a no-agreed-draw (or no draws before move 30) rule. Moreover, players who wanted to have short draws anyway would get around it by collaborating, such as repeating moves. The pros could easily find ways to do this without compromising their position. So while draws “by agreement” in their present form would obviously disappear above the 1400 level (no one stronger than that would ever be stupid enough to offer anyone a draw if your proposed rule was in effect), the incidence of draws “by collaboration”, and pre-arranged draws, probably would go UP.

Not that I would care, anyway. As I said at the outset, I am not against either draws by agreement, or draws by dis-agreement.

“Plus, I bet the average number of moves per game would increase, and the draw rate would decrease…”

AHA! THERE is your real agenda. Sadly, it is shared by many who should know better (including even no less than Bill Goichberg, who on another Forum thread once discussed seriously some of those destroy-chess-to-save-it-from-draws rule change ideas – ideas far more radical than what Gene is proposing here). Since it isn’t my agenda, I see your proposal as more of a Trojan Horse (wow! that’s probably the best double entendre I’ve ever written in my life!) than a sincere attempt to solve the “draw offer harassment” problem I raised here.

"[2] …But TD’s are people, and they dislike enforcement confrontations same as we all do. I would prefer rules be designed to reduce the need and potential for confrontation, while also solving the problem…
The two rule change options described above would reduce or eliminate the problem, without telling TD’s they have more unpleasant confronting being demanded of them. "

You’re right about psychology. But sometimes, to do their job right, people need to do what is uncomfortable for them. Redefining the job to remove the difficult parts isn’t always the best way to go.

"[3] BTWay, the rules should emphasize that all draw offers need to be notated on the scoresheet just as much as any move does (“D.O.” or whatever). "

I agree, and I believe the rules already make it mandatory to record all draw offers on the scoresheet. I even think FIDE and/or USCF recently did something that elevates that rule. I must confess I’ve been remiss in complying with this rule in my own games.

11

There is no USCF rule requiring draw offers to be noted on the score sheet. I’m not sure if requiring that would do anything to eliminate repeated draw offers.

I think Bill Smythe’s suggestion regarding enforcement of make the move, offer the draw, and press the clock, in that order solves the annoyance factor.

If the opponent makes the draw offer on his time I don’t really care if he offers a second time. If he does it on my time when I’m in time pressure then I may get annoyed. I also have the right to have the TD warn the player regarding violation of 14B2.

Draw offer with opponent on move.
If a player offers a draw while the opponents clock is running, the opponent may accept or reject the offer. A player who offers a draw in this manner may be warned or penalized for annoying the opponent.

Though sometimes I think the act of stopping the clock, getting a TD and making the complaint is going to distract and annoy me more then simply ignoring him. Some of this type of behavior is merely psychological warfare on the part of the opponent, and by ignoring it you take the opponent out of his game.

My solution is pull my baseball cap down low to block view of the opponent and listen to classical music on my ipod. (As long as TD does not object. Never have been told that I could not use it.) Worked wonders last night when playing the most annoying chess player in New York City. :stuck_out_tongue: [/b]

12

I try to squeeze every last winning chance out of a position and consider offering/accepting a draw a last resort if my position is not lost. Since my number of wins from those attempts definitely exceed my number of losses, I plan to continue doing so.

When my position is definitely inferior I fight on, but I wait until I have what I feel is a truly legitimate drawable position before making an offer. Since I’ve squeezed many draws and some wins out of positions other experts and masters have thought were lost, I plan to continue to fight on rather than offer a quick resignation.

Generally when I do finally make a draw offer it is accepted immediately because the position has no real play for either side to try to win. Even if there was a rule change to keep draw offers open longer, it would barely change the number of times I offer one since my offers could generally be safely kept open for a dozen move-pairs or more at no risk to my game.

That said, a literal reading of the rule means that I may have on occasion been technically improper in making a second draw offer after the first has been declined with no intervening counter-offer. I don’t have any qualms about the occasions I’ve done so because the positions were dead drawn and the play was reduced to shuffling pieces. On those occasions, a second offer is usually accepted, but when it has also been declined I ended up having to eventually claim either the 50-move rule, three-fold repetition, or sometimes even insufficient mating material (usually two lone kings).
If the dead drawn position is not materially changing then I do wait about a half-dozen moves or so before making the second offer, as that is sometimes necessary for an opponent to see just how drawn a position really is (or, if the opponent is higher rated, to see that I really do know how to hold the drawn position - I know that I’ve played on against lower rated players in positions that were drawn just to make sure that I wasn’t overestimating their abilities to handle the positions, and the number of such games that I’ve actually won makes me understand why players rated higher than I am would first want to see if I really can hold the position).
In these cases the substantial change in the position is really the demonstration that the position really is drawn and the player has shown how to correctly handle it to keep the draw. I don’t feel that this limited subset of making repeated offers falls under the “may be construed as annoying the opponent”.

A very explicit rule change would make handling draw offers and annoyances more consistent, but would make some dead drawn games take longer. I’m currently ambivalent about making a change. I feel that I could make a reasonable ruling with the current rule, but explicit rules are generally easier for people to see why you are making a ruling.

My own personal favorite story about a draw offer was a game against a player three classes below who achieved what he thought was a drawn ending with K, Q, dark-squared B, 4 pawns vs. my K, Q, dark-squared B, 5 pawns. He offered a draw, which I declined. The following move he said that he didn’t see how I could make any progress. Five moves later he resigned when he finally saw why he had been dead lost for about 20 moves.

13

Polly, did the guy’s first name begin with “L”? (There are two different guys I’m thinking of who fit the description you gave, and both their names start with that letter.) :laughing:

Seriously, I dispute your point that a draw properly offered (pursuant to the rules, i.e., AFTER making one’s move but BEFORE pressing the clock) cannot or should not annoy anyone. You might not find it annoying to receive multiple draw offers in a game as long as each one is presented before your clock has been pressed. But every person is different; I would find it annoying.

jwiewel, I’m a miserable endgame player, and (mercifully) my games almost never get to an ending. So, theoretical draws or “dead-drawn” positions have never been a factor for me personally.

That’s probably part of the reason why the situations you described (where it MIGHT be beneficial to give someone leeway to offer a draw a few moves after his first offer was refused) never really occurred to me.

Even then, from what I have observed, higher-rated players nearly always will play it out and try to win, no matter how dead the endgame position appears. It’s not all that rare for a higher-rated player to refuse a draw offer and play on for a win even when he is LOSING on the board. IM Yuri Lapshun is either a virtuoso at this, or infamous for it, depending on your point of view.

So I think it’s unrealistic to simply assume, as you seem to do, that the rules or a TD should encourage the draw-seeker to, in effect, nudge his opponent to accede to the inevitable by repeating the offer.

In any event, it should be clear that my concern here stems not from my own games. I said in the initial post that the behavior I labelled “draw-offer harassment” has happened to me just once in 38 years of OTB tournament play. (Although it is maddeningly frequent in online play, as well as more obtrusive, since online draw offers generally bring a jarring automated “voice” notification as well as an instant screen message. And when playing standard internet 1-minute or 3-minute chess, you are ALWAYS in time pressure.)

Rather, what apparently happened to Gurevich in the Championship struck a chord with me.

14

One time I offered an opponent a draw in an equal position and was turned down. Nine moves later, the position was still equal and the position greatly simplified (queens and other pieces had come off) and I offered again, innocently enough, but my opponent flew off the handle. “You can’t offer me a second draw…!” - I ended up beating him. It was hilarious.