Chess is a Draw

[Chessqueen]

100 games and 100 draws. It's over now folks! SF and Lc0 plays perfect chess from opening position.

Honestly, in my opinion it is NOT over, If you could draw every game against Carlsen, there would be a huge amount of fans watching you and cheering for you hoping that you could keep Carlsen from winning one single game and people would be more interested in watching how you could keep one of the greatest chess player from beating you,. The game would become more popular by having more people watching and studying your Opening, Middegame and endgame.

NOTE: Honetsly Just because Chinook Solve Checker and can NOT lose to any human https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/scie ... ckers.html does NOT mean that Checker was discontinued among humans, as you can see Alexander is the current Checker Champion and the amount of followers and interest to see the best 2 human players has NOT disminished when humans players play checker https://www.bing.com/search?q=Checkers+ ... cc=0&ghpl=

[towforce]

100 games and 100 draws. It's over now folks! SF and Lc0 plays perfect chess from opening position.

If this result is confirmed in other tests and tournaments, then it looks as though the maximum chess elo rating is around 3,700. That would be surprising to me, because extrapolating from old elo vs draw rate charts, I always expected the maximum to be well over 4,000.

This is the way of AI that relies on massive computing power: for a long time, you make very little progress, then suddenly, you're there!

[lkaufman]

If chess is now so clearly drawn with proper play, or even with "good" play, the question arises as to what changes to the draw rules, without changing other rules of the game, would eliminate most or all draws while leaving some doubt as to which side should win. The obvious changes, making stalemate a loss for the stalemated side and making bare king a loss (restoring the rules of around year 1400), would of course reduce draws but not sufficiently to cast any doubt on the drawn result with proper play. So what to do about repetitions and fifty move rule draws? If we assume that it's easier to avoid repetitions than fifty move rule draws, what would happen if all repetitions were called wins for White, while all fifty move rule draws were called wins for Black (plus the above stalemate/bare king rules)? It's not at all obvious to me in this case whether White or Black should win with perfect play. Perhaps someone could modify Stockfish or some other strong engine to use these draw rules and test it, although of course the play wouldn't be optimized for those rules.

[towforce]

I once read a study which found that one of the best ways to reduce the draw rate was to allow taking of one's own pieces!

Apparently, the value of being able to do this outweighs the obvious drawback (one loses material).

However, it might be that as the tactic became widely known, it would lose its potency.

[lkaufman]

I once read a study which found that one of the best ways to reduce the draw rate was to allow taking of one's own pieces!

Apparently, the value of being able to do this outweighs the obvious drawback (one loses material).

However, it might be that as the tactic became widely known, it would lose its potency.

There are many such drastic rule changes that would reduce draws rates a lot. One variant (I forget the name) is simply to let the bishops also move like knights (so they are archbishops or januses), I imagine this would drastically reduce draws unless perpetual check becomes too common (in which case it could simply be outlawed). But I'm looking for changes that don't change the nature of games other than games that are currently draws. The draw rules in chess don't seem as sacrosanct as the basic moves of the pieces. If we want to reduce or eliminate draws, why not focus on the draw rules?

[Uri Blass]

100 games and 100 draws. It's over now folks! SF and Lc0 plays perfect chess from opening position.

If this result is confirmed in other tests and tournaments, then it looks as though the maximum chess elo rating is around 3,700. That would be surprising to me, because extrapolating from old elo vs draw rate charts, I always expected the maximum to be well over 4,000.

This is the way of AI that relies on massive computing power: for a long time, you make very little progress, then suddenly, you're there!

For the maximal rating the problem is that rating is dependent on the rating pool and you have no reliable rating in the first place.

For example

In CCRL blitz the rating leader is above 3800
https://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/
In CCRL 40/20 the rating leader is below 3650.
https://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/

It is not logical that
Stockfish 16 64-bit 8CPU at 2+1 is significantly stronger than
Stockfish 20230613 64-bit 4CPU at 40/15 .

If you have a lot of buggy engines in the list that can play sometimes good games but sometimes make stupid blunder then they will win often against strong engines and lose often against weak engines and reduce the rating gap between engines.

[jefk]

mr Kaufman wrote

The draw rules in chess don't seem as sacrosanct as the basic moves of the pieces. If we want to reduce or eliminate draws, why not focus on the draw rules?

Well there's some conservatism in chess i guess, and organizational slowness (ICCF), but
for engine-engine play (*) and correspondence chess such changes imo indeed are needed.
So some studies/experiments in this area are welcome indeed; with some modified SF
(or other top engine) clones, possibly with various anti-draws options.

Besides some nitpicking sometimes, this still can be the community which can lead
to an (agreed on) optimal -and optional - new anti-draw chess variant, not replacing
normal chess (most likely not for humans, unless maybe later like chess960 at top GM
level) but for engine-engine games and ICCF correspondence chess.

To avoid a wilderness of new variants, ideally the result would be a just one new variant
with some modied (mostly endgame) rules with a clear name e.g. Anti-draw Chess, for
use in ICCF (at first as extra option/variant) and engine-engine tourns.

A good topic for a new thread, i think.


(*) except maybe for very fast time controls but then interface
and lag problems start to appear

[towforce]

I once read a study which found that one of the best ways to reduce the draw rate was to allow taking of one's own pieces!

Apparently, the value of being able to do this outweighs the obvious drawback (one loses material).

However, it might be that as the tactic became widely known, it would lose its potency.

There are many such drastic rule changes that would reduce draws rates a lot. One variant (I forget the name) is simply to let the bishops also move like knights (so they are archbishops or januses), I imagine this would drastically reduce draws unless perpetual check becomes too common (in which case it could simply be outlawed). But I'm looking for changes that don't change the nature of games other than games that are currently draws. The draw rules in chess don't seem as sacrosanct as the basic moves of the pieces. If we want to reduce or eliminate draws, why not focus on the draw rules?

Thank you for responding, and that's a very good point. My problem is that engines are becoming unbeatable in the game of chess, and changing the draw rules will only delay the inevitable.

On the other hand, if the solution is to make chess bigger (larger board) or more complicated (new rules which expand the size of the game tree), then it just won't catch on: I've never seen anyone play tic-tac-toe on a grid larger than 3x3, for example (unless "Connect 4" counts as a tic-tac-toe variant).

So maybe delaying the inevitable is the best we can do right now.

[jefk]

towforce

engines are becoming unbeatable in the game of chess, and changing the draw rules will only delay the inevitable.

Good point, certainly when an engine would be tuned to such new rules (other/new nnue net).

Yet what we should think of, is a variant which is less 'stable', much more unbalanced,
in other words where initially you would see lots of wins for either side; you can even
think of rules forbidding a draw outcome. But then b/w chances should be equal(*) ,
unless (also in ICCF) they are setting up tourns with two games (both W and B)
between two contenders (like now apparently already in the TCEC)

(*) for the latter purpose i already found a balanced board setup, at least for
normal chess, which is playing without the f3 and c7 pawn(s); but then the board
is not symmetrical. Ah well, chess is a anyway not really symmetric, the
B queen and King should be switched for that purpose!

[Ozymandias]

chess is a anyway not really symmetric, the B queen and King should be switched for that purpose!

Indeed, it's a very common "mistake" among beginners, because they're after all doing what comes naturally. BTW, that variant, which exists on FICS, would be less drawish, as it encourages opposite sides castles.

wild

Wild is a little different than the other categories of boards (see "boards"
help file) in that the starting positions are non-standard. Because wild
games are fundamentally different than regular chess, they are rated
separately from blitz and standard chess games. The wild ratings, however, do
not take into account the time controls; all wild games are rated on the same
basis.

Here are the major variations of wild that are rated:

Style 0: White has the typical set-up at the start. Black's pieces are the
same, except that the King and Queen are reversed, so they are not on the same
files as White's King and Queen. Castling is done similarly to normal chess:
o-o-o indicates long castling and o-o short castling.