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Reducing the draw percentage

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Saturday, 8 December 2018, at 5:47 p.m.

In Response To: Reducing the draw percentage (David Rockwell)

My preferred way of stating David Rockwell's suggestion is to change the checkmate rule rather than the stalemate rule. That is, declare that you win the game by capturing the king (which is what the original rule must have been when chess was invented) and make it legal to "move into check." This will eliminate most of the current positions that are drawn by stalemate. I think it's fine to say that a "true" stalemate (where you have no legal moves even if moving into check is legal) is a draw. This change will also have the advantage of making it easier to explain the rules of chess to kids and other beginners.

I don't think, however, that changing the checkmate rule in this way will alter the drawing rate at top levels by much. For example I doubt that any of the Carlsen–Caruana games would have been affected by this rule change.

Fischer Random Chess, or its modern incarnation Chess960, will greatly reduce the phenomenon of long memorized opening variations, but as I recall, enough high-level Chess960 tournaments have been played now that the evidence is pretty strong that the drawing rate for Chess960 is basically the same as the drawing rate for classical chess.

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