- Ravenfood
- Nov 4, 2011
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Could you go into why draws happen a lot in top-tier competitive chess? The only time it's offered in the show it feels like the person at a clear disadvantage is offering it to avoid a loss and I couldn't figure out why anyone would take them up on it.
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Nov 18, 2020 09:58
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May 10, 2024 02:29
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- Ravenfood
- Nov 4, 2011
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The examples in the show were really silly
Begging for a draw, when you are mate in one is absolutely pathetic. But draws tend to occur in certain situations where both players don't blunder. Most often it comes due to the rule where you can't repeat the same position three times. But if that is the optimal move for either player, one has to decide to either draw, or playing something less than optimal, which might lead to a total loss. Then there are regular endgame draws, because there are no moves, or mates left.
A less direct situation would be a late game where the king is in a strong fortress, while the attacker basically has no choice but to attack it, while all defences are obvious. There might be a lot of different angles for an attack so repeating three times would take a while. If it's noticeable that this just won't go anywhere, experts would draw, because the silly alternative would be to play as fast as possible and hope the opponents time runs out first. Of course that might happen if there's less than 30 seconds left.
Amateur players end up drawing way less often, because in those games there are a lot more mistakes or downright blunders which tilt a balanced game. Needlessly losing a single pawn, can be enough for that.
Also, in tournaments and consecutive games there are draws which basically preserve the total points. If at some particularly even point of the game one player sort of fears that he might lose the game in 60% of the cases while he suspects that the other player would feel just as pessimistic, offering a draw would be preferable fron both perspectives because they get a chance of 1 to get half a point, rather than a chance of 0.4 to get a whole one.
If it's the end of the tournament and there's only a 0.5 point difference between those final players, the leader would happily offer a draw, rather than risking the absolute loss.
Cool, thanks. I'll be honest (finale spoilers) I briefly hoped that Borgov was offering a draw because he was prepared to win decisively (since they talk up his endgame strength vs her opening speciality) but wanted to acknowledge her brilliance so far and give her that draw instead. But nope, he just loses like everyone else. oh well.
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Nov 18, 2020 17:56
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- Ravenfood
- Nov 4, 2011
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So how is the general chess community taking this show and it’s inspiration for an explosion in interest in chess? Are they mostly all happy about it or are there insular assholes scoffing at it?
I'm curious too. One thing it weirdly did for me was make me really wanting to get back into fencing.
Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Dec 27, 2020
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Dec 27, 2020 18:02
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Nov 18, 2020 09:58
