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And honestly I think the draw percentage in chess is influenced just as much by sociological processes as it is by game theoretic concerns. The very top chess p

And honestly I think the draw percentage in chess is influenced just as much by sociological processes as it is by game theoretic concerns. The very top chess players are extremely risk averse. Chess is way too complex for humans to ever be able to play perfectly in sufficiently complex positions, honestly. The top players today obsessively avoid positions like that unless they can find a forced drawing line as a backup. In other words, not losing is heavily prioritised over winning in top chess, currently. There are many possible ways to change this. My favourite is to make a win worth 3 points, and a draw 1 point. Both in tournament scoring and rating calculation. I think this would incentivise more aggressive play, and disincentivise the constant slog of the same 15 top players playing mostly draws against eachother, and barely playing in more open tournaments with a bigger rating interval.

mkesper 3y ago
German soccer league followed the English and Italian league in 1994 with a three points rule. It seems to favor the better teams (with more expensive players) even more, stabilizing the championship. https://www.fiaa.at/theories/die-3-punkte-regel-und-ihre-profiteure/ https://www.fiaa.at/theories/die-3-punkte-regel-und-ihre-pro...
bluGill 3y ago
Great chess players often pull out a draw from what looks like an obviously lost position. Mostly great players start playing for a win, but somewhere in the middle they realize winning is hopeless and switch to looking for a draw.
axlee 3y ago
> In other words, not losing is heavily prioritised over winning in top chess, currently. It's more that once you are in a losing position, winning is extremely difficult, and a draw is often the best thing you can achieve. From there on, the losing side cares about not losing (because winning is almost impossible), but the winning side stills tries to win. Great chess players are the ones who can turn a losing position into a draw, or prevent draws from a winning position.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  Then why do we see superGMs constantly bail out for a draw when they're not losing, sometimes even in a better position? And consistently play quiet, safe openings, instead of sharper, if more dubious stuff. Sometimes the position is completely equal with plenty of play left and they instead manufacture a draw via repetition for no reason. Yet occasionally we see players throw out unsound openings and they work out just fine because they're so complex and sharp they're hard to refute. I understand how chess play works, being a tournament player myself. My point is not on the mechanics of chess, but the psychology of these players as a result of being brought up in a chess world where risk averse play is strongly awarded. Ultimately, the core problem here is that these players choose to play in a way that leads to more draws, not that they're so unbelievably strong that it's almost impossible for them to beat eachother. Just look at computer chess. They're way beyond human capability, and yet they still don't play perfectly. That should tell you how large the gulf is between current human play and perfect or even close to perfect play.

mkesper 3y ago

German soccer league followed the English and Italian league in 1994 with a three points rule. It seems to favor the better teams (with more expensive players) even more, stabilizing the championship. https://www.fiaa.at/theories/die-3-punkte-regel-und-ihre-profiteure/ https://www.fiaa.at/theories/die-3-punkte-regel-und-ihre-pro...

bluGill 3y ago

Great chess players often pull out a draw from what looks like an obviously lost position. Mostly great players start playing for a win, but somewhere in the middle they realize winning is hopeless and switch to looking for a draw.

axlee 3y ago

> In other words, not losing is heavily prioritised over winning in top chess, currently. It's more that once you are in a losing position, winning is extremely difficult, and a draw is often the best thing you can achieve. From there on, the losing side cares about not losing (because winning is almost impossible), but the winning side stills tries to win. Great chess players are the ones who can turn a losing position into a draw, or prevent draws from a winning position.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
Then why do we see superGMs constantly bail out for a draw when they're not losing, sometimes even in a better position? And consistently play quiet, safe openings, instead of sharper, if more dubious stuff. Sometimes the position is completely equal with plenty of play left and they instead manufacture a draw via repetition for no reason. Yet occasionally we see players throw out unsound openings and they work out just fine because they're so complex and sharp they're hard to refute. I understand how chess play works, being a tournament player myself. My point is not on the mechanics of chess, but the psychology of these players as a result of being brought up in a chess world where risk averse play is strongly awarded. Ultimately, the core problem here is that these players choose to play in a way that leads to more draws, not that they're so unbelievably strong that it's almost impossible for them to beat eachother. Just look at computer chess. They're way beyond human capability, and yet they still don't play perfectly. That should tell you how large the gulf is between current human play and perfect or even close to perfect play.