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Comment by foobaw | Hacker News Reader

Another nail-biting draw!

It's the first time since 1978 (Karpov-Kortchnoi) that a world chess championship begins with 7 draws, the longest draw in a raw beggining in a world chess championship !

Welcome to modern, boring chess. I wish we still had hyper-aggressive grandmasters like Mikhail Tal.

The computer age has unfortunately sort of crushed that style of play :( It's hard to play sacrificially when the engine refutes your attacks

If Leela and AlphaZero have anything to say, it's that there is such a thing as being overly materialistic.

Sacrificing material for positional compensation is hardly a new concept

We do, they just don't qualify for the world championship.

If Mikhail Tal was alive today, he would play boring chess, too. Otherwise modern GMs would just accept his sacrifices, not make any mistakes, and win.

These games were all but boring. And nowadays there are great games being played, even if they end in a draw. Check out Carlsen-Svidler from earlier this year.

Players like Tal had their share of boring games, it's just that we remember the crazy ones because they're fun.

Late in his career Mikhail Tal put the fireworks away and transformed himself into a supreme technician. He set a record for the longest undefeated streak in chess history. Basically he'd fit right in today.

Interestingly enough, that record was just broken by Chinese GM Ding Liren, who played 100 games before losing to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave at the Shenzhen Masters tournament.

Carlsen-Karjakin 2016 began with 7 draws.

It's hard to change a game that's so old, but draws shouldn't be allowed, only stalemates.

Imagine if the Lakers played the Warriors, and late in the 4th quarter, the game is tied, and LeBron and Curry decide they are tired, declare a draw and go to their locker rooms. Not particularly satisfying.

Your analogy doesn't make sense. In basketball, if your opponent gets tired, that gives you a better opportunity to win. In chess, if the game nears the end and neither of you can see a way to win, then there's no good opportunity. Your analogy would make more sense to say the basketball game was tied and there are three seconds left on the clock and both players have broken wrists. Playing three seconds of game to risk injury is not worth it for either player.

It also doesn't mean the game was unexciting.

In a championship match tiredness and losing focus is a big deal. A lot of draws are simply not wanting to risk burning out when there are more games to go.

Saying that, Carlson once had a reputation for not agreeing on a draw and being able to maintain focus while his opponent faded and made a mistake.

You shouldn't comment so confidently about something you don't understand. The position is drawn. There was no way for either side to win.

You shouldn't comment so snarkily to someone you don't know. I understand what a drawn position is, however players will regularly agree to a draw well before it actually happens. They choose to draw because of potential drawn positions. There's no reason for a game not to continue until there is an actual stalemate (or a set of similar circumstances, like a situation in which checkmate is impossible), or a blunder by one of the opponents.

> I understand what a drawn position is

To make this more concrete, the following link is a drawn position (it is trivially easy for either side to avoid checkmate, indefinitely)

http://www.jinchess.com/chessboard/?p=---k------------------...

However, checkmate is still possible (White can checkmate Black if Black makes severe blunders that even beginners probably wouldn't make)

Do you think the players should be forced to play on here?

Yes! Or black should resign. And in addition, they have clocks for a reason - though time is added indefinitely at the end (if a player moves fast enough) - if a player takes an hour more than an opponent (like Carlsen did in the middle of game 8) they should start to feel the pressure of that more severely.

Why do you think Black should lose here? Why is Black's position worse than White's ? If your answer is "White has more material", keep in mind that chess is not about material; it is about checkmate.

But, nevertheless, here's an example with equal material where checkmate is possible for both sides, but not without blunders. Who should have to resign here?

http://www.jinchess.com/chessboard/?p=--------------------k-...

If you really insist on saying "well yes, they should have to keep moving the kings around aimlessly for hours until somebody's clock runs out", you're proposing a game that is so fundamentally unlike chess that it should probably be given a different name.

Perhaps a doubling cube can be used like in backgammon, ie, one player can up the ante, in a draw-ish situation. Ie, staring at a draw, one player says: let's play for a win, but at double the points, if the other player accepts game continues. If other player rejects the doubling, he is considered to have conceded the game at the original 1pt stake.

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