Frequency of Draws

[perseus]

Frequency of Draws

Wikipedia has something to say about this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draw_(chess)

In chess games played at the top level, a draw is the most common outcome of a game: of around 22,000 games published in The Week In Chess played between 1999 and 2002 by players with a FIDE Elo rating of 2500 or above, 55% were draws.

Comment:

Slightly surprisingly, I have only 10% draws in my games on Stans.

[perseus]

Maybe at the highest levels, it should be 3 points ofr a win, just one for a draw.

[perseus]

My draws:

www.stansco.com/cgi-bin/nc_game.cgi?319746

Classic. Draw by repetition as both players would have lost in a few moves by checkmate of the moves were departed from.

Others were not so exciting:

Roughly translated they were:

Bored each other to death. Draw accepted.
Too tired at night. Mucked it up by moving the wrong piece with a mouse. Draw accepted.
Got a lucky break. Did not deserve a difficult win end game. Draw accepted.
Bishops and equal pawns,. Could not see a way to win. Draw accepted.


Pawn ahead with Rooks on the board (always dodgy) and I could not work out how to win!
www.stansco.com/cgi-bin/nc_game.cgi?329667

Well, at my standard, often a pawn ahead is just not enough!

Don't rely on this though. I may play one just to see if I can play the longest game on record!

[perseus]

I think I will hold to the Sophia Principle and never offer a draw under 30 moves !

[savin]

Draws are pretty coomon at stan's amongst the top players:

Senior Master vs Senior Master games end in a draw 55.4%

When both opponents are a Stan's Master or Senior Master the game ends in a draw 40% of the time

When both players are Experts or higher the game ends in a draw 27.8% of the time.

I doubt they will ever consider something like 3pts for a win and 1 pt for a draw, there is just too big an advantage to playing white at the higher levels. At Stan's white has a win % of 55.3%. This means that if two players of equal ability played each other in 10 games and one played white in all 10 games they would win by a score of 5.5 to 4.5 (1pt for a win and 0.5pts for a draw). For instance, the result might be 5 draws, 3 wins for white 2 for black.

[savin]

Of the currently active players the top 20 when it comes to having a draw as a result are:

nobodyspawn 47.37%
senna2 36.26%
larryljubo 34.04%
Aaron 32.50%
Wolf 30.88%
anastas87 29.00%
RT 27.87%
Thunderboy 27.17%
YB 26.76%
Tony58 26.67%
euwe 25.71%
kml 25.22%
hana-chessprincess 24.84%
Savin 24.55%
Kong105 24.49%
PANDURANGAIAH 23.93%
zev22407 23.81%
henk 23.52%
michaelbolton 23.44%
satishkk 23.29%

Of course, this does not mean these players are more likely to agree to a draw. It probably is an indication that they play the bulk of their games against the top players at the site.

[tumshie]

In March of this year I played in the Glenrothes Congress here in Scotland where 3 points were given for a win and only one for a draw. This meant that with 4 wins and one defeat I took joint second place in the minor section, pushing an old friend into 4th when he had 3 wins and 2 draws. In every other congress I have played in 2nd place would have been a 3 way split and I would have won £33 rather than the £50 I did get, so it must be a good idea! Any doubts I had over whether it was fair on my friend in 4th were assuaged by the fact that we had played each other in the final round and I recorded my first ever victory against him in a formal game.
I don't have the figures but I do remember being told that there were fewer draws than would normally be expected, but whether or not the quality of the play was affected I don't know- at least in general. I know I played the 2nd best tournament I have played, but also know of a young player rated 600 points above me who fought for wins in 2 positions where he would normally have settled for a draw, and lost.
So, to sum up- objectively I don't know if this scoring method helped the level of chess being played. But on a subjective note, I got more prize money this way and it made the congress more exiting for me so I think on balance I like the idea.

[perseus]

Interesting replies.

I expect the top players may decide to eschew certain openings because they are drawish