"Andy Walker" <anw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:fs65ev$jfs$1$830fa795@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> In article <7KSdnen0rP-7XHjanZ2dnUVZ_rOqnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> David Kane <davidekane@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> [...] Imagine, for example, we awarded a
>>draw the value of 0.9. What do you predict that change would
>>make to the game, and would it improve the game?
>
> Well, it certainly wouldn't improve the game. But both
> that change and a change to 0.1 would, it seems to me, make far
> less difference than you seem to think.
>
> * No difference at all to matches, where only wins matter, inc
> especially WC matches, which is where many of the complaints
> have come.
> * No difference at all to league chess [perhaps 60-70% of all
> serious chess in the UK], where only wins affect the match
> result.
> * No difference at all to "friendly" chess in your club.
> * No difference at all to KO tournaments.
> * Negligible difference to "weekend" tournaments, where you have
> to be very lucky to win a 5-round event with 4/5. Four wins
> and a draw will put you ahead of everyone with either one loss
> or two draws, whether the draw scores 0.1 or 0.9.
> * Negligible difference to 5-min or rapidplay or correspondence
> tournaments, where "soft" draws are already very rare.
> * So you are left with long Swiss tournaments and round-robins.
> These may be an im****tant part of top GM chess, but it's a
> tiny pro****tion of chess as played by the rest of us.
> * Even then, while there certainly are abuses [which can be stopped
> by other means -- Rentero simply didn't invite players who
> took short draws back to Linares], you seem to be assuming
> that a large pro****tion of draws are abusive, and would stop
> if draws scored < 0.5. It would plainly have *some* effect;
> but it seems to me like an unnecessary sledgehammer to crack
> the wrong and rather small nut. A long tournament simply is
> a very arduous event -- it's like taking 11 or 14 6-hr exams
> on consecutive days, with any single lapse of concentration
> potentially scoring you zero on that paper. If you deny the
> players ways of taking some days off, they will simply find
> other ways.
I have to say you make some very good points
concerning chess' big picture.
I would only add, however, that it is precisely the
play of the best players that has the best chance of
gaining an audience. If chess tournaments were
perceived as battles rather than drawfests, they
would be worth paying attention to. We'd be a lot
more interested in what happened in that
Anand-Kramnik game if we could count on it
being a struggle, instead of, as is more likely,
an uneventful draw.
Also, if playing the drawing game no longer worked
in tournaments, who is to say that some of that
fighting spirit wouldn't carry over to other aspects of
the game? My sense is that much of the fondness for
draws is psychological. I think one of the reasons
humans do so poorly against computers is that humans
are simply unprepared to face a monster that is
relentlessly trying to gain an advantage every single
move.
A few corrections. Rentero's efforts were
too weak and were unsuccessful. My argument
has nothing to do with labeling certain draws
as "abusive". The numbers of both long and
short draws are increased by 1867-scoring.
Rather than hold a pointless debate over which
draws are "worthy", the idea behind alternate
scoring is to simply reduce the number of all
draws by making them less rewarding.
It's more than silly to have a tournament structure
that rewards those who play in a fa****on that
produces lots of draws, and then make a
stink because the draws they are being paid
to play don't look like we want them to.
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