"Andy Walker" <anw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:fs15ot$1hl$1$8300dec7@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> In article <FYGdndgD_tFwd37anZ2dnUVZ_oytnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> David Kane <davidekane@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> [3-point wins in football:]
>> [...] And it has also not produced
>>any cheating - the original weak argument put forth against changing
>>the scoring in chess.
>
> I agree that it's a weak argument, but it's a step too far
> to say it has produced no cheating. There is a *lot* of money in
> top-level football, and there have certainly been allegations of
> match-fixing, betting scams, etc., some of which have led to court
> cases.
>
>>I am actually curious what changes the altered scoring had on
>>soccer. Are you aware of any analyses?
>
> Well, I'm not. But there do seem to be a lot of matches
> decided in the last minute or two of extra time ....
Are you suggesting crookedness? Isn't that a good thing
from a dramatic point of view?
>
> [...]
>>If alternate scoring eliminates the GM draw, and makes chess games,
>>on average, more combative and more interesting, what is the downside?
>
> Lot of "if"s there. Draws, GM or otherwise, in matches are
> completely unaffected by [sane] alternate scoring schemes, and in
> tournaments no-one is going to win the event just by drawing, so you
> are talking about draws taken for other reasons -- perhaps because
> the game really is utterly dead, perhaps because the players want a
> break from a pretty strenuous activity, perhaps because the result
> is, or is thought to be, irrelevant. Alternate scoring does not
> affect the first of these; if it affects the second, its effect is
> to make players play when more exhausted; and it may make the third
> less likely, but it does not affect the situation where one player
> needs only a draw to guarantee the win, or a title norm, or even
> where several players are tied for the lead.
I'm not sure of your point. If draws are worth less, players won't accept
them
so
readily. They won't design their repertoires to give them positions
(when Black) where they can "hold the draw". When preparing,
when playing, they will look for winning chances. Isn't that what
we expect of contestants in just about every other s****t/game?
Why is asking the same of chessplayers outrageous?
>
> As for more combative/interesting, it could equally have the
> opposite effect. If the stronger player has more to lose by merely
> drawing, the weaker player has more incentive to stodge the game up.
>
> The "downside" is merely that chess becomes, like football,
> a non-zero-sum game. This mucks up a fair chunk of game theory.
> Whether this is im****tant depends on whether you are a theorist ....
Is there a *practical* "downside"?
>
>>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.
>
> I think you think wrong. I think the reason is that no-one
> outside the top players understands well enough in real time what
> is going on. You can watch a football match, and you can see that
> the score is 3-2 to the Reds, but the Blues have the ball and are
> attacking. You don't need any expertise at all to understand that;
> and you need very little to appreciate the skills involved in an
> accurate pass, a successful tackle, a good save, and so on. So
> billions of people can watch the World Cup final and follow the
> action live.
Of course, there are many reasons why chess is not
as popular as football, ***, food etc. Picking extreme
examples doesn't help make the case that chess is
as popular as it could be.
>
> Try that with chess. It's like watching paint dry, until
> there is a time scramble. Only expert players have any idea at all
> what is happening. Many games are resigned when a club player would
> still have no idea what is happening. I can play through a game
> between [say] Anand and Kramnik, but the only way to understand what
> has happened is to have annotations, preferably provided by the
> players themselves, constructed hours or days after the game has
> happened. There have been valiant attempts -- the BBC had excellent
> coverage of the Kasparov-Short match, for example -- but they really
> can't compete with live coverage of football, golf, cricket, ....
> You would get more "action" from 5-minute chess, but then you would
> have even fewer prospects of getting any appreciation of what is
> happening in real time. Chess is to be played, not watched.
Go is considered more complex than chess, but seems to
have bigger purses. My cable stations are filled up with
"contest" shows for all sorts of activities: fi****ng, cooking, singing,
dancing, not to mention lots of made up "s****ts" invented by a TV
producer that have no players whatsoever. Many of these
have prizes that would make top chessplayers drool.
But chess has millions of casual players and almost no
high-level game that those players pay attention to.
By the way, I am not convinced that playing wouldn't
also be improved by a less draw-favorable attitude.
>
> We can all agree that a 12-move draw is not usually a very
> exciting game of chess, and that such draws should be discouraged.
> But I'd be quite surprised if many people give up chess because of
> them. You seem to me to be barking up the wrong tree.
>
It is unclear. Elementary school chess
has large numbers and almost no draws. Participation
drops with age as the draw rate increases.
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