Slightly surprised - wouldn't have thought they'd let a little something like total futility stop them

GMTonyKosten wrote on 05/28/12 at 12:18:10:


Does seem very peculiar to produce something so manifestly unworkable.
Suggest you buy some sheep and burn them at tournaments. The traditional French protest, non?
Work on the underarm fragrance a tad first tho.

That only causes the players to find more ways of drawing, for example, finding a line where one can trade all off all pieces from the opening and play for the 50-move rule in lieu of the three-move repetition if arbiters will not accept opening repetitions. For example, both sides might consider playing the Marshall Gambit endgame with Black having sacrificed a pawn for the two bishops, and both players might agree before the game to trade all of the pieces after this position is reached.

I think in the instance of the endgame K+R v. K+B, then if both players are somehow forced to play this endgame past the 50-move rule and cannot repeat moves, and also that both players realise that this is an obvious draw, the simple thing to do is the player with the rook capture the bishop and end the game immediately into K+K. If the arbitro tells them to do this a few moves after this endgame arises, then the player with the rook should capture the bishop immediately and enter king vs. king.

The only other option I can think of is for the players to agree before the game that if they enter a drawn endgame position, would be to allow each other to capture all of the other player's material to deliberately enter a K v. K position to declare the game a draw. I would not want to play with these tournament rules though. I think I might resign instead of play further due to frustration or fatigue.

For example, hypothesise that a game is in this position:



Both players do not want to play this since they feel it is a draw. The arbiter tells them to play on, so they deliberately play moves with the only goal of entering a K v. K position. Then a draw is achieved by forcing the players to waste time playing the moves located above. That seems as a waste of time to me.

Suddenly Kortschnoi's "My Life for Chess" is getting a totally new meaning ...!

GMTonyKosten wrote on 05/25/12 at 10:58:57:

But if there is a 3-fold repetition which neither side can avoid without a heavy disadvantage? Do they have to play on until one of the players dies? Especially in junior championships, that will take some time!

Then I think it was mentioned before, grandmasters will simply play a drawn opening line, or perpetual check in the middlegame.

True of course the opponent is not complied to accept the draw offer, but I am referring to those positions where both players are fairly reasonable and the position simply cannot end in any other result than a draw unless an opponent plays extremely crazy and illogically. In those cases, which occur frequently before move 40. I thought the topic of the original post was discussing hypothetical tournaments where there would be banned draws before move 40.