Other Events: Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw...

In Poikovsky, the players were up to their usual miserable tricks: four draws in five games, three of them very short. (23, 23 and 26 moves.) Only Bacrot decided to play a real game, and he was rewarded, grinding out a tough win against Caruana in 78 moves. After five rounds there have been five decisive games, and Bacrot, Karjakin and Efimenko lead with +1 scores. Twenty draws four rounds remain. Hopefully none of these guys gets invited back next year.

Yesterday, I had expressed hope that the Governor's Cup in Saratov, Russia would prove more exciting. How could it not with players like Morozevich, Shirov and Ponomariov? Sure, Leko's playing, but he has been a pretty feisty player so far this year. So what happened in round 1? Six games, six draws. It's not as bad as it sounds, though. One game was a little short (30 moves), one a little long (57), and most went to around the time control on move 40. So there was an effort, just no wins.

In Swiss events it tends to be different, and in Oslo the increasingly unretired Matthew Sadler continues to shine. He won in round 8 with Black against Elsness, the only player within half a point of him going into the round. Ironically, the four players in the next score group...you guessed it - drew - and now Sadler leads the next group (of 9 players!) by a whopping 1.5 points with one round to go. His TPR so far has been 2819, which bodes pretty well for his continued return.

Have Draws Increased At The Top? Sonas Says No

Have a look here, where ChessBase's favorite statistician Jeff Sonas claims that at the top the percentage of draws has only risen very slightly since the 1960s and has held even steadier for master chess in general. Further, the percentage of short draws (ones agreed to before move 25) has declined considerably since the 1980s, and that pre-dates the Sofia/Corsica rules.

As I've said a million times, don't exaggerate draws aren't a problem.

Sergey Shipov On the Draw "Problem"

I'm not a big fan of the topic of the so-called "problem" of draws in chess, primarily because I don't think that it really is a problem. (Perhaps the real problem is that so many fans think it's a problem!) What is a problem, occasionally, is the specter of short, bloodless draws in non-world championship super-tournaments. My preferred solution is simple: organizers and sponsors make it clear that persistent offenders won't be invited back for a year or two, and if the Grand Prix organizers engage in a little solidarity those who like short draws will feel a powerful motive to play some real chess. Draws per se are fine, however, especially as it's almost surely the correct result of a chess game.

Anyway, a large number of solutions to the alleged problem have been proposed, many of them high in quackery. One of the more interesting suggestions has been recently offered by Sergey Shipov, a sort of hybrid of 3-1-0 scoring and Rustam Kasimdzhanov's recent proposal to have drawn games played off in games with increasingly shorter time controls. Shipov suggests the following:

1. In case of a win in the normal game, the winner gets 3 points, the loser none.

2. After a draw in the normal game, there will be a pair of blitz games, and if they don't produce a winner, an Armageddon game. The winner at this point will get 2 points, the loser 1.

It's an improvement on both Kasimdzhanov's proposal and 3-1-0 scoring, and it would certainly be entertaining for chess fans. I for one would like to see it tried as an experiment in an elite event.