On July 21, the former FIDE world champion GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov sent a public letter to FIDE regarding his proposal. The point of his proposal lies in adopting replay rule when a game ends with draw, as we do in shogi, though he did not use the word shogi in his letter.
And here is how it works. We play classical chess, say with a time control of four to five hours. Draw? No problem – change the colours, give us 20 minutes each and replay. Draw again? Ten minutes each, change the colours and replay. Until there is a winner of that day. And the winner wins the game and gets one point and the loser gets zero; and the game is rated accordingly, irrelevant of whether it came in a classical game, rapid or blitz.
A lot of responses to his proposal semms to have been collected by chessbase.com. They are available to read in the following link. I'm picking up the two parts mentioning to shogi.
Simon Blome, Germany
I'm just an amateur (Elo 1900) and I feel exactly the same about draws. I appreciate GM Kasimdhzanov's straight opinion and his proposal!
A personal experience: I had a season in which I had every single game drawn! That was not bad but I felt dissatisfied with that season and thought of it as a waste of time. I hardly remember any of the games played. In contrast I had a season in which I had not a single draw! My result was four wins to three losses. Man, I remind all the games of that season. Some were won brilliantly, others were lost terribly, but there was not a single lame game without emotion. It was an inspiring, good feeling. So I think that 'emotion' is a word that GM Kasimdzhanov described but did not name in his open letter. In fact, emotion is a big thing in tennis, but a rarely experienced in (short) draws in chess. Spectators can feel with the players, they share their emotions! Another example is Shogi. In Japan there are live games on TV, with top rated players, professional live commentaries, live reactions of the players – all the things I wish we could have for chess sometime...
Harvey Patterson, Ottawa, Canada
Kasimdzhanov makes a compelling argument, but the obvious flaw is that this system benefits rapid players. A strong rapid player can "pull a Grischuk" and try to draw every game in order to go to rapid tiebreaks.
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Adding this rule would increase the likelihood that games would be played to victory (though not checkmate), which Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh pointed out would be good for the fans. This would reduce the number of draws, but still would not prevent draws by agreement (those could still be banned or forbidden before a certain move), by repetition, perpetual check, or lack of progress. If we really want to get rid of most draws, let's also add the impasse rule from Shogi: if the game is drawn for any reason, the game is decided by counting the material of both sides. This would make it impossible for a losing player to avoid defeat through perpetual check; threefold repetition would only be worthwhile when both players have the exact same amount of material (threefold repetition could be banned); and it would even cut down on draws through lack of progress, which can easily occur despite one player having a material advantage of at least one point.
The addition of the "baring the king" and "impasse" rules would dramatically reduce the number of draws, and banning threefold repetition and agreed draws would practically eliminate them entirely. The only way a draw could occur would be a situation such as an opposite colored bishop ending where neither king can catch the other player's bishop, or deadlocked pawns in an even-strength game. This ought to make draws rare enough to please the fans, players, and sponsors. It would also allow games to be resolved by actually playing them out, right down to bare kings if necessary, rather than requiring players to start a new game in order to break the draw (though Kasimdzhanov's rule could still be implemented if you abolutely want no draws). It eliminates the possibility of a strong rapid player trying to draw the long game to get to rapid tiebreaks, and allows a classical match to actually be decided by classical games!
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