Two of my high school players just mentioned they had made a side bet (just $2) on their game against one another. My gut says this should not be allowed, but I don’t see anything in the rule book.
Opinions? Rules that I missed?
Rule 20J (p. 69 in the most recent edition of the rulebook) says: “… it is improper for contenders paired against each other to engage in discussions about the game or its outcome before or during the game.” Also, Rule 20L forbids the manipulation of results.
However, I think it’s a stretch to apply this to a side bet of the form “I’ll bet you two dollars that I’m going to beat you!” followed by “OK, it’s on!” This doesn’t seem like manipulating results to me. It’s just trash talking with a monetary incentive. I’ve done a bit of trash talking before a game myself on a few occasions, and I don’t see anything wrong with it as long as it’s relatively good-natured. Each player is still determined to beat the other (even more so now that money is at stake), and that’s as it should be. Even if it’s strictly against the letter of Rule 20J, if I heard it at one of my tournaments, I would just ignore it and move on.
I told them not to tell me about any side bets. It was pretty clear they were both trying to win.
Years ago, a TD posted a “no betting” sign at a tournament I attended. The problems were (1) young players whose parents did not want them exposed to the betting (and told me so), and (2) a rather weird adult who wanted to bet on every skittles game. If kids didn’t have any money, he would offer to play for the sandwich they brought for lunch.
Years ago, I overheard two strong players (both Experts) agreeing to draw their last-round game. I told them that I couldn’t really prevent them from playing to a draw if that’s what they wanted to do, but that it was bad form to talk about it in front of the TD. Then I pretended that I hadn’t heard anything.
I am dismayed by the tendency to want to bet money on the outcome of any and every contest, as if the contest itself is worthless without monetary incentive. The “thrill of victory” (or even the “agony of defeat”) is enough for me. I’ll obtain money the old-fashioned way, by working for it. However, as I’ve already said, I don’t really have a problem with people making small bets, if that’s what floats their boat. I do avoid big-money tournaments, both as a player and as a TD. The lure of big money brings out the worst in people.
I largely agree with Mr. Kosterman in this thread. If a strong player wants to draw a game, there are openings he can play to tell his opponent that a draw is satisfactory. This is why I’m opposed, in principle, to Sofia Rules.
Where it becomes a problem is when a win will mean significant money for either player, but a draw will mean much less money for both. It has been alleged to happen that the players agree in advance that one will lose and they will split the money, not necessarily 50-50. One well-known case had a player repeatedly say “Money for me, glory for you” repeatedly until his opponent understood that the price for throwing the game was 100% of the prize. The opponent indignantly refused the “unfair” split and went on to lose.
Few of us have any concept of the pressures top players play under; where not winning a tournament means not eating that week. Nevertheless, it is completely unacceptable to lose a game on purpose.
Alex Relyea
Which top players are under this financial strain?
All except a handful at the very top. He wasn’t talking about Magnus Carlsen or Fabiano Caruana. Think about lesser GMs (or even non-GMs) who are trying to make a living by playing chess, but are not part of the elite group (maybe a few dozen GMs in the entire world) who get automatic invitations to the big tournaments. This is one reason why a lot of the top scholastic players drop out of chess once they reach college age. It’s nearly impossible to make a living playing chess unless you’re one of the handful of players at the very top.
What the kids did is fine. Don’t tell the principal in case it gets them in trouble though.
Pete Rose got thrown out of baseball for betting on games as a manager. But he was always betting on his team to win, and many people including me think that should have been fine. It’s corrupt if it changes the incentives.
If he had ever bet against his team, that would have been corrupt and nobody would mind that he isn’t in the Hall of Fame. As it is, his absence diminishes the Hall more than it diminishes him.
Chess is more complicated than baseball because we have draws. Is agreeing to a draw in advance corrupt? It’s got a long and distinguished history. I think it’s part of the charm of the game: you can fight, but you don’t always have to. Forcing a fight can have bad consequences. If you have a non-decisive position in a game with no increment and one player has 2 minutes and the other has 1 minute, honorable players may agree to a draw to avoid mayhem and a random result. I think that’s good, not bad.
Ah, but what if one player has significantly more time than the other (say, 30 minutes to just a few minutes)? Most players will be happy to claim a win on time regardless of the objective evaluation of the position, and I have done so several times myself (back in the days of “action chess” with no delay, I also lost some games in this manner). In a few of these games, the position was pretty lifeless and almost certainly would have been a draw if time wasn’t a factor, and I felt “guilty” afterward, thinking that maybe I should have offered a draw instead of running my opponent out of time. On the other hand, time management is part of the game, and if you can’t do it properly, maybe you deserve what you get.
The last time I was in this situation, the following position was reached (my apologies for my inability to include a diagram):
White (me): King on g1, Rook on a1, Knight on f4, pawns on c3, f2, g3, h2.
Black (my opponent): King on f6, Rook on e8, Bishop on c4, pawns on a6, b6, h7.
It’s White to move, with roughly an hour left on the clock to Black’s 6 or 7 minutes. The time control is sudden death with a 30-second increment. Black (who is higher-rated, but not by much: 1440 to 1400) has just offered a draw after playing 37…a6. I’m a pawn up with a lot more time, but the Bishop is traditionally better than the Knight with pawns on both wings, his King and Rook are better placed than mine, and his Queenside pawns make me nervous. I’m not sure that Black isn’t better, despite my extra pawn. So I accepted the draw. I’ve been second-guessing myself and bemoaning my lack of courage ever since. Surely I have good chances to outplay him in this position with so much extra time – but then there is always the increment. For what it’s worth, my computer (an old Fidelity model from the 1990s) doesn’t see a big advantage for either side here. There’s no ethical dilemma in this case, but was I being practical or cowardly?
Allowing side bets is a very bad idea, for related but slightly different reasons. Let’s keep in mind that in the days of Morphy, being a chess master was viewed as akin to being a riverboat gambler. It was viewed as a low form of employment, based on betting, and not something that was generally acceptable. This is part of the reason why Morphy maintained his amateur status.
Do we really want schools, libraries, and other public groups to think of chess as a wagering activity?
Secondly, in a second thread, I’ve had recent discussions with organizations that handle monetary transactions, such as PayPal, VenMo, Zelle, etc., and creating the appearance that chess is gaming could significantly damage the ability to use those services.
Further, many locations don’t allow ANY exchanging of money on site - and hotels are also concerned about that, since there are gaming laws.
If two people want to make a small wager on a golf course that’s fine. But we really need to be aware of, and avoid the appearance of, gaming. Letting it happen could seriously damage chess.
Increment really minimizes your time advantage. It reduces all but the most complicated positions to just a game of chess. Not taking a close look at the position, but if you don’t see a way to possibly realize your extra pawn then it’s reasonable to take the draw. The objective situation doesn’t matter much. If you’re never going to find a win in any position, then a draw is fair.
I consider a rating difference this small to just be a means of sorting. Two players with those ratings aren’t likely to have noticeably different levels of play.
Alex Relyea
Elo would probably have agreed with you, I’ve read that he thought two-digit ratings would be preferable to three-digit ratings or four-digit ratings, though four digits are better for sorting and pairing purposes. (‘Better’ is a very subjective word in this context, what it really means is that it is less equivocal.)
These days US Chess keeps ratings to several digits to the right of the decimal point, which is arguably better than always rounding away from zero, which allowed some players to creep their ratings over a threshold one point at a time without ever playing opponents close to that threshold. (I have advocated for a 200 point threshold, if you are a 1700 player and want to be an 1800 player you need to demonstrate that you can beat 1600 players, otherwise you have a 1799 ceiling.)
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