Famed chess author Mark Dvoretsky has published the latest edition of his “The Instructor” column on ChessCafe.com, on 2008/01/09 Wed.
Dvoretsky writes at long length about FRC - chess960. He ultimately urges that the opening position in today’s chess be modified, by using dice to determine the first 2-4 plies. He is essentially proposing a compromise between FRC and today’s chess.
Dvoretsky says short draws are hurting chess. But I understand him to be disputing some of the common claims that all short draws are lazy. Dvoretsky seems to say instead that many short draws are hard-fought, but that all the fighting took place at home during analysis of the one start position that today’s chess uses repeatedly for every game.
Dvoretsky implies that the Sofia rule will not succeed at reducing the draw rate, as we already know from Sofia 2005. Most of the short draws Dvoretsky is talking about would end as a draw no matter how many more move-pairs the game were extended to.
It’s not that new of an idea. The idea of a random set of opening moves has been in checkers for decades, now. They brought it in when checkers became drawish.
His idea might even work by simply randomizing among all the currently known opening tabiyas. The resulting position will be less unknown, true, but it still might result in enough discomfort to make the games more interesting.
No, he explicitly says that the Sofia rule was “successfully carried out at tournaments in Corsica and Sofia.”. Dvoretsky is advocating FRC and random first moves not to decrease draws, but to increase creativity and enjoyment by removing the crushing burden of modern professional opening preparation. I think Sofia rules would still be needed to prevent short colorless draws.
Given that Dvoretsky would have complete control, I doubt he’d accept a move limit before offering a draw. He had a far more radical proposal, one which I’d like to see tried, because while I like it, I suspect it’s not enforceable, except in tournaments that can afford one arbiter/director at each board.
Ah, I’m not sure I understand your point. That Dvoretsky proposal–to simply not allow draws by agreement–is very similar to the Sofia rules; in his current ChessCafe column referred to above) , he says: “I suggested rescinding the rule allowing players to converse during the game, hence eliminating draws by agreement. I published a lengthy article on this subject in 2003 in the Russian-language magazine Shakhmatnaya Nedelya, and on several Internet websites; my suggestion was soon successfully carried out at tournaments in Corsica and Sofia,” and I think he’s talking about exactly that article.
Maybe I’m an optimist, but I don’t think it would be so hard to handle, say, twenty boards. Would it help if players had to turn in scoresheets? Or it could just be enforced on the top boards–that’s where the biggest abuses are.
It would probably be unpleasant the first couple of times a TD ran it, until players got the idea he was serious. After all, we are talking about American “amateur” chessplayers here.
All I can say is, I’d play in such a tournament, at least if it were run with an increment time limit (as Dvoretsky suggests in the link you gave). And I’m someone who plays a lot of draws.