In those rare instances where both players have run out of time for whatever reason, you reset with 5 additional minutes for each player and continue in the same method. Overtime.
And I’m not sure why you couldn’t consider it a single game. Rating wise it would probably be more accurate in reflecting the stronger player at the time.
Brian, your idea is interesting, but bizarre.
Yup.
Here’s another idea: In the subsequent games in the series, reset neither the clocks nor the pieces. Pieces on dark squares would have their colors reversed. Pieces on light squares would remain the same. i.e. a white piece on a dark square would become a black piece, a black piece on a dark square would become a white piece, all pieces on light squares would keep their colors.
If one player ended up with both kings, that player could not win the game, because he could never mate, but he still might draw. A draw would lead to the next game in the series, where, with any luck, each player would have one king again.
Bill Smythe
After some consideration and discussing this with other people Brian I’ve arrived at these tweaks to your general idea. May even try this at club some Monday night with an unrated event.
Any position for whatever reason that would normally be a draw. (Even Draw by agreement.)
The clock is stopped.
Time in even minutes is added up from both players and divided in half. Example White has 21 minutes left, Black has 10 minutes left. 31 / 2 = 15 1/2 for each side.
All pieces are setup to their initial positions.
Colors do not change.
Level 1 overtime begins.
The reason for dividing the time is that it gets rid of the time odds portion of the game. It also encourages the players to play slow, because a drawn position actualy rewards them with extra time.
The reason for the colors not to change is that way you won’t have players delibertly playing for a draw just to get the other color.
The reason for the Level 1 overtime is it indicates that it isn’t a seperate game but the same game, just using the overtime rules.
In the enventualty that both players run out of time in the heat of the battle without one of them calling Flag, 5 minutes will be added to both players and the game will continue. I think that this would be a rare event and about the only thing to make the round run over.
Now having said all of that. The reality of using these rules at the local level (at least our local level) is very remote. For example we are in the middle of the City Championship and have completed 20 games of which only one of them was a draw.
Other possible issues when using the Swiss System for pairing.
Currently most Swiss’s offer 1/2 point Bye. If there are no Draws what meaning does a 1/2 point Bye give you?
It would also effect the pairings because the score groups would all be even numbers.
But at the higher level of play, say when Kasparov kept drawing with Karpov to extend the match this would have prevented that.
There are probably other unforseen issues also.
So as a solution to prevent “Grandmaster Draws” it might be a bit of overkill.
Finally a reply with an appropriate tone, giving the ideas their due consideration!
I was hoping somebody would say that.
Or, that they would ask further questions, so we could really go all out in generating an appropriate tone.
Such as, what happens if one player has both kings, and they are both in check?
Answer: The player must get out of both checks, otherwise he is mated.
Or, what happens if, following the color changes, somebody is in check?
Answer: If the player on move is in check, no big deal. Just get out of check (or be mated). If the player not on move is in check, the game is over (mate in zero).
Now, in answer to that pesky double-flags question, why not just give each player 1 minute in the next game, and have the TD watch the game and call flags?
Bill Smythe
Hey, they both ran out of time. Why not pair it as a loss for both? It’s the player’s own fault for not calling his opponent as out of time and then letting his flag fall – why reward that with a half point???
Better yet, both players have ignored the rules of chess – shouldn’t they be kicked out of the tournament and possibly banned from future events? If we’re eliminating draws, why not all other “half measures”?
If you have 90 minutes left with the Black pieces and your opponent has 10 minutes left, he’s been rewarded with an extra 40 minutes and a second White for having one ninth the amount of time left that you do. It could add a whole new dimension to the meaning of “time trouble.”
Because no tournaments would ever have any late entries, and no one would ever drop out?
Greatest! That avoids half points. Full points, too, for that matter.
Bill Smythe
With this version of the idea, Games 2 through N, the game is too different from regular chess. With the original concept, the games are chess, it is just that if you use up more time than your opponent in Game N, you do not get that time back in Game N+1. So, there is no advantage to drawing to get out of time trouble. You are just going to be back in time trouble on the next game. As for the double flags question, if both players let their flags fall, I think it works just to give them some small amount of time, the same amount of time each, such as 3 minutes, and if that is a draw, Black gets the point.
Moderator Mode: Off
After a long discussion with my friend, wzim/Wayne, about this yesterday, I have a thought or two.
The obvious purpose of this idea is to eliminate, not just reduce, the draw in a game of chess. There are many sports and activities that have things in place to eliminate the draw and decide a winner for that event. Basketball, American Football, Soccer, Tennis and many other activities have this. While the draw has been a part of chess for many years, it doesn’t mean it is necessary. Yes, there are players that use the draw to increase their performance in tournaments and matches. If the draw were eliminated then the tournament and match strategy would need to change.
I certainly can understand the setting up of the pieces anew as being similar to overtime in basketball. In basketball though, not all is equal in that new game “period”. Particularly if a player has fouled out of the game in any of the previous time periods, he is still out of the game for overtime.
I think the colors should remain the same for the players in any of these “overtime” periods. When playing a chess game, the color does matter in that the player might very well be prepared for his opponent with that color in that game. Changing colors would change the competition too much for that game. Also the game is designed to occur with the colors the players are given. To keep the colors the same in any of these “periods” would keep the competition consistent in that.
The problem with keeping the same time(s) on the clock is that this would change time management strategy. It is suggested by teachers and coaches to try to use all your time for your game. In this, the player using all his time versus the one that just played quickly would be at a disadvantage.
I believe that a better way to do this would be to take the sum of the players’ times divided by two for each player in the next period. This would still keep the tournament time schedule and there would be no advantage to playing faster.
It is an interesting concept and would change the face of tournament play quite a bit. That doesn’t mean it’s bad though.
If we did this, then the championship matches would play more like baseball’s World Series and basketball’s finals. The match could be for best of seven games, since each game will end in a win or loss decision.
A draw is just about as likely an outcome of a game of Chess, particularly between two players of similiar abilities, as a win or a loss. That’s not true for the other activities. In Chess, for example, no one can force checkmate when the position is K vs. K, or K + P vs. K (with the K and P stalemating the defending K on the queening square). In the other games, it’s always possible that one side might be able to score, if more time is added. In Chess, this is often not possible, which is why draws are an inherent part of the game.
Exactly – draws are a fundamental part of the game and there’s nothing at all wrong with a draw. I doubt MOST people would have any objections to hard-fought draws. Or even to mildly contested draws. All that most people find objectionable are the totally uncontested draws at some embarrassingly early move number. It’s just hard to eliminate those without also doing something damaging to the game as a whole.
We ought to be relying on shame and reduced invitations to events to encourage players away from “GM draws” (and I mean really putting in some effort to both shame the players – just in the immediate time-frame, not for life – and curtail future event invitations), but I really don’t think there’s much of a problem below the GM level. I don’t remember the last time I saw an uncontested draw at class A or lower.
I see this frequently in the last round in lower sections at weekend tournaments. I don’t see it as being problem. It’s part of the game.
If a player is receiving an appearance fee to play in a tournament then it might make sense to impose rules designed to prevent the player from playing short draws, or to stop issuing invitations to players who are notorious for playing such games.
This idea isn’t mainly about short draws; it is about conducting tournaments without any drawn “matches” at all, so that every match is decisive. Games can be drawn, but if they are, they are replayed.
Some great chess problems are “Black to move and draw,” where at first it looks likes Black is dead lost, only to find some ingenious resource to save the game.
Why is there such an aversion to draws?
I contend in a swiss there will likely be MORE people tied for first if all results are decisive.
I think the knockout, or maybe double elimination, format is the only one that makes sense if all results are decisive in some way. We all know how negative the reaction was to the FIDE knockout World Championships, do we really want that kind of uproar at the US Open (for example)?
All these anti-draw rules change suggestions are a bad idea, in my opinion. Chess is chess; it’s done well for several centuries now, let’s not mess with it.
-Matt
Agreed.
To discourage draws, run a plus-score event, where the difference between any two adjacent prizes is less than the difference above it. For example:
4.0 wins $100
3.5 wins $50
3.0 wins $25
2.5 wins $10
Thus:
($50-$25) is less than ($100-$50)
($25-$10) is less than ($50-$25)
($10-$0) is less than ($25-$10)
For example, two 3.0 players paired against each other in round 4 will win a total of $125 for a decisive result, $100 for a draw.
Bill Smythe
It depends. The ideal situation for a draw-less Swiss happens when the number of players is equal to 2 to the power of the number of rounds (e.g., 16 players, 4 rounds). In this case, if there are no draws, you are guaranteed to have exactly one player with a perfect score (you can think of it as a knockout tournament with a lot of consolation games). If draws are allowed, it is much more likely that there will be a bunch of players tied for first with 3.5 or 3 points.
Of course, you can’t always arrange for the number of players to be perfect.
Makes sense. Without draws, there are fewer score groups for players to end up in.
With four rounds, for example, there are nine possible score groups at the end: 4, 3.5, 3, 2.5, 2, 1.5, 1, 0.5, 0.
But with no draws, there are only five possible score groups: 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
With fewer possible score groups, each possible score group would tend to have more players in it. That would include the top group (whether 4-0 or 3-1).
Bill Smythe
With draws, a Swiss tournament may have a clear winner after only 1 round: for example, in round 1 there is one decisive game and the rest are draws. It might also never have a clear winner: for example, in every round, every game is a draw. The basic design of a Swiss, which is that it embeds a single elimination tournament which produces a winner after a certain number of rounds, fails to a degree when there are draws: some games have no result. A single elimination tournament wouldn’t work with draws either. Draws make it indeterministic whether a Swiss will have a winner and increase the probability that the result may have to be determined by tie breaks.
Without draws, a Swiss can be guaranteed to produce a clear winner after exactly log2(N) rounds where N is the number of players, the same as a single elimination tournament. It will produce a clear second place after log2(N)+1 rounds, a clear third place after log2(N)+2 rounds, and so forth. A Swiss without draws will not produce a clear winner before log2(N) rounds. With each round the number of people who are in contention to win is reduced by a factor of 2, reducing to 1 after log2(N) rounds. With more than the required number of rounds, the property of there being one clear winner may not be preserved.