"Peter Clinch" <p.j.clinch@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:64i695F2b3k56U1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> David Kane wrote:
>
>> ??? Ties are an impossibility for a large number of games and s****ts.
>> Is it your claim that all of these contests are unfair?
>
> if the players are effectively equal and the game doesn't reflect that,
> then /to an extent/ they are clearly unfair because they do not reflect
> the fact that the contest is even in their outcomes. That doesn't make
> them broken to any real degree, but conversely a game which won't
> necessarily have a decisive outcome isn't fundamentally broken either.
>
>> In many other s****ts, ties are a theoretical possibility, but rare. In
>> those
>> where they are possible and not so rare (though still far rarer than
>> chess), e.g. soccer, many have taken steps exactly as proposed for
>> chess (alternate scoring that devalues ties).
>
> And they haven't obviously worked that well, as soccer still has plenty
> of draws. The problem is that pu****ng too hard for a win tends to have
> you lose instead, with a commensurately greater penalty so at least as
> much point in playing it safe. Moving to 3 point wins from two point
> wins didn't really make much difference to soccer.
>
But the point is that they were instituted to solve a "draw problem"
that was much smaller than chess'. And it has also not produced
any cheating - the original weak argument put forth against changing
the scoring in chess.
I am actually curious what changes the altered scoring had on
soccer. Are you aware of any analyses?
>>> You still aren't
>>> demonstrating that draws are bad or that most people don't like them.
>>
>> Much like we don't debate the merits of breathing oxygen. The very fact
>> that
>> chess' draw situation is an extreme compared with almost every other
>> human contest should tell you something.
>
> It tells us that similarly ranked chess players are fairly evenly
> matched.
No. It tells us that if the scoring system makes the return on playing
for a win low, that chessplayers are smart enough to figure that out
and play in a way that produces lots of draws.
This is not actually Big News, and a game that reflects that
> is hardly broken. The "breathing oxygen" thing is such preposterous
> exaggeration it looks to be the work of a straw-man manufacturing
expert.
>
>> According to Wikipedia "Conventional komi in most competitions is a
>> half-integer....
>> This is convenient and the prevailing usage for tournaments, since it
>> rules out a tied
>> game and rematches."
>
> But of course the outcome of, and logistics of running, a tournament is
> a different thing to the outcome of a game. You shouldn't assume they
> mean the same thing.
But the point is that Go typically designs its rules so that ties are
impossible at high level events. No doubt there is a connection
between that fact and the fact that Go tournaments have bigger
prize funds.
>
>> I suspect that even with your integer komi, draw rates are nowhere near
as
>> high as the cancer it has become in high-level chess.
>
> They're not as high, but in Chess it isn't a cancer, it's an aspect of
> the game. if you don't like the game then play one you do like rather
> that bugger about with metagaming aspects that aren't really much to do
> with the fundamental game underneath.
If alternate scoring eliminates the GM draw, and makes chess games,
on average, more combative and more interesting, what is the downside?
> For a game with "cancer" that you seem to think breaks it, Chess is
> *remarkably* popular! The more you complain it's broken, the more its
> enduring popularity at all levels demonstrates it isn't.
It's popular to play. But note that at the amateur level,
draws are far rarer.
The fundamental mystery of chess is why such a
popular game has so little attention paid to its best
players. The answer, I think, is that the best
players are playing in competitions in which
draw-producing play and strategies based
on drawing rule. Chessplayers are human and
humans respond to drama. If 75% of games
are draws, and many of those draws are
not even contested, you've got a situation that
is designed to alienate the average chess
enthusiast. Now I will grant that how much
better things can be is an unknown - but we will
never know until we try.
In fact the chess world has from time to time
introduced various rules (e.g. the Sophia rules)
to deal with the draw problem, but these have
largely been ineffective. I think that all measures
that ignore the underlying risk/reward calculations
that chessplayers face are destined to fail.
>
>> You sound like a Go enthusiast trying to kill off chess.
>
> I do? I prefer Go to Chess, but I still like Chess. It does different
> things well, and I don't think it needs changing.
>
> Pete.
> --
> Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
> Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
> Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
> net p.j.clinch@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
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