Re: Draws at Linares 2007


"Dr A. N. Walker" <anw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:euu1uo$qmt$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <1tCdnbKL9euV-4zbnZ2dnUVZ_qKqnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
David Kane <davidekane@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[...] A win secured by an "unforced" blunder from a level
position is no more interesting than an agreed draw in that same
position; a draw secured by dogged defence that just succeeds is
no less interesting than a loss after dogged defence that just
fails.
Yet when people vote for "best" games, they
overwhelmingly vote for decisive ones.

That's a different matter. Firstly, if you're inviting
"votes", then these are likely to go to manifest "brilliancy"
or "drama" rather than the actual quality of the play. Secondly,
"best game" implies that its perpetrator played well; but a
*drawing* brilliancy implies that its perpetrator had played
sufficiently badly to be in a position where the rescue was
necessary.

Why is it a different matter? It's an exact expression
of the kind of chess people like. If the well-crafted draws
were as appealing as you think it is, they'd be getting votes.

Almost
every other popular activity has well-known stars
whose appeal extends well beyond that of expert
practitioners of the sport.

Oh; lots of factors here too. This is something that
varies widely across the world, for a start. I guess that most
Americans are no more capable of naming chess players beyond
Fischer and Kasparov than most western Europeans. It's different
in eastern Europe; and it was [may well still be] different in
the Netherlands; and different again in Asia [especially in the
intellectual strata of their societies].
Further, chess is not the only popular activity with
relatively little big-name appeal. The most popular activity in
the UK is said to be fishing; I couldn't name a single "star".
Nottingham is a major centre within the UK for water sports and
for ice sports; I could name some of the yachting/rowing stars,
but none of the "white water" or similar, I don't know the name
of a single ice-hockey player more recent than Chick Zamick, nor
of an ice dancer since Torvill and Dean -- and I'm sure that's
not unusual. Dozens of sports are played competitively at least
as much as chess but with no public recognition until the Olympics
roll around and suddenly we get our dose of archery or gymnastics
or skateboarding. Sumo was very popular a few years back in the
UK when it appeared on TV; then it disappeared and "no-one" here
knows the names any more.

Not just physical activities either -- Scrabble, backgammon,
Othello, cruciverbalism, sudoku, philately, ... are all popular with
no "personalities" known to the UK public. Poker is different --
because, of course, it appears on TV here. Simple as that. We
wouldn't know any chefs, gardeners, DIY experts, antiques experts
or property developers either, were it not for popular TV series.
Spot the common theme.

I'm not quite sure I get your point. I guess I'm saying that
chess has a low (marketable product)/participant ratio.
As you seem to be aware, other activities which don't
seem any more inherently interesting than chess seem to find
a market. But chess refuses to.


[...]
often, the "drama" is "in the notes", and so hidden from view.
The question is whether you would have behaved
differently had you been faced with a more sensible
set of incentives than the outmoded 1867 rules.

"More sensible"? "Outmoded"? Hmm.

It's
not a question that anyone can truly know the answer
to until it is tried. However, the lack of interest in
chess world played by those rules is fact, and it
seems reasonable to believe that there is a connection.

"Fact." Around here, the number of competitive chess
players is indeed seriously down from the "Fischer boom". OTOH,
it is still around twice the number from the '60s. Over that
same period, FIDE has expanded from a first-world club to include
practically every country in the world. The ranks of GMs and IMs
have expanded from a handful of top names to a list several hundred
long. Junior chess events in the UK can attract thousands of
entrants, and dozens of coaches can earn a living. No interest?
Little publicity, perhaps. I don't get any sense that juniors
are put off by the fact that some games are drawn; much more
that they hit a barrier when the demands of improving at chess
start to compete with the demands of school work and the other
demands of the teenage years. Playing in the comfort of your
own home over the "interweb thinggy" also tends to compete all
too well with going down to the club.

Again my point is that chess is very popular to play. I, too,
am constantly amazed at the interest in the game that I see
at the scholastic level. But from what I can tell, almost
no one pays any attention to high level chess. Perhaps there
is nothing wrong with that, but it seems very unnatural.



If you're conceding that chess' drama is hidden somewhere
"in the notes", you're making my case for me better
than I ever could.

But that's not going to change merely because draws are
discounted. Several minutes of thought finds its expression in
one physical move. The onlooker has no information about what
you were thinking except that one move. Did you overlook that
clever combination? Or did you see a refutation that escaped
the onlooker? Or did you hallucinate a refutation? Or did
you fail to evaluate the resulting position correctly? We
don't know until after the game. *During* the game, the drama
is in the match/tournament situation, in the sweat on the brow,
in the nervous tics -- and in the expert commentary.

I'd love to hear your expert commentary of the last
round of the Tal Memorial tournament I previously
alluded to. If you can make that interesting, you should
be in the entertainment business.





[...] Should I convert that edge into a pawn up
at the expense of giving you some compensation? Should I
simplify the position or play for complications? Broadly,
such issues are beyond the computer, which just evaluates each
move as best it can into that 1.23 pawns.
First, I'm not sure that there is any fundamental difference
between your decision and the computer's, but that seems
an aside. For that matter, I'm sure we could program
computers to play drawishly if we wanted to.

"Drawishly" is your invention from the above. My point
is [still] that the computer evaluation is one-dimensional. I
don't know of a computer program that understands, for example,
the concept of variance reduction -- the concept that humans
use to close down the opponent's chances for counterplay [when
winning] or to open up our own [when losing] or to "randomise"
when trying, as the stronger player, to win a level position.
[This is different from computers playing anti-human strategies,
though there are some similarities.]

First, I don't understand your claim that computers are
one-dimensional. They evaluate many different factors and then
combine them, just like humans. The difference is that
computers will give you a concrete explanation of how
they arrive at a move, whereas we humans give vague
answers. But it doesn't change the underlying nature
of the process. I don't see any reason why computers couldn't
be programmed to do other things that humans do, like reduce
counterplay, or play for a draw when the crosstable situation
warrants it.

My reason for bringing up computers' low
draw rate is that it refutes the theory that high draw rates
are inherent result of a high Elo (i.e. the perfectly played
game is a draw and humans play perfectly enough) It
suggests that the human draw rate stems from factors
external to the game [for example, overcounting draws].


[...]
I'm just saying let's experiment with modifying the
incentives to produce more interesting competitions.

Well, that's fine. But you do your case no good by your
use of language. *I* don't feel that my own draws are not real
contests,

I never claimed that your games weren't real contests. Only
that everybody's games could be more contested if
the external incentives were different.

nor that chess is boring because some games are drawn,

I definitely never claimed that. I've been talking all along
about *excessive* draw rates.

nor that drawing two games against a GM opponent are less of an
achievement [for me!] than a win and a loss,

Mathematically, it *is* less of an achievement
because GMs don't lose very often. How you feel
about the achievement is, of course, up to you.

nor that limited
Serious Money in chess is proof that something is Wrong,

Proof, possibly not. But it sure has to be evidence of something.
Why deny it?

nor
that the current Laws are outmoded.

I believe that the *scoring system* is outmoded. It seems
to have very few virtues beyond 140 years of history.
It's what we'd pick if we knew absolutely nothing
the game of chess. But why not *learn* from the 140
years of history, recognize that it has produced uninteresting
competitions that few care about, and make appropriate
changes?


.

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