By the way, just to inject some actual data on the magnitude of the
draw problem in chess...
http://www.chessgames.com
has a large database of games, mostly
between strong players. Their `opening explorer'[1] gives win/loss/
draw statistics for the most commonly played openings. Of these, the
moves 1.e4, 1.d4, 1.Nf3 and 1.c4 account for 98.3% of the 460,000
games in the database. Restricting to those four opening moves, we
see that:
36.8% of games (167,000) are won by White
36.6% of games (166,000) are drawn
26.6% of games (120,000) are won by Black
We already have 63.4% of games ending in a win by one player or the
other. Is it really necessary to `solve' this `draw problem'?
Another issue is this: it is clearly seen that White has an advantage.
White scores, on average, 0.551 points per game, compared to Black's
0.449 points per game. Any system that reduces the score for draws
will make Black's position slightly worse, since he gets more of his
points from draws. The option of giving a third of a point for draws
would give White 0.490 points per game and give Black 0.388: White
goes from scoring 55.1% of the available points to scoring 55.8% of
the points. This effect is smaller than I would have expected.
Dave.
[1] http://www.chessgames.com/perl/rerolpxe
--
David Richerby Lead Painting (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ Renaissance masterpiece that
weighs
a ton!
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