Page 4 of 4 … The End of the Draw Offer? (Maurice Ashley)

If we were to agree that this is a serious problem that needs addressing, the next question has to be "What can be done about it?" When I brought up this subject with former Women's World Champion Susan Polgar, she said that she remembers that in the old Soviet and Hungarian championships players were not allowed to offer draws before move thirty. She also reminded me that Rentero, the organizer of Linares, used to have it in the players' contracts that they were not allowed to draw before the first time control. I agree that this is a great place to start, but why not after fifty moves instead? We already have a fifty-move rule so this already creates some harmony. The reason I am not jumping to eliminate the draw offer entirely is to deal with the reality of those endgame situations where there really is nothing to play for. Fifty moves seem like a reasonable compromise although I would not be against someone saying sixty or seventy. The key is for a real game to be played.

Paul Truong, who also shared in this discussion with Susan and me, suggested that if players wish to draw then it's impossible to stop them. They could always create a game that ends in perpetual check or three move repetition.  This is true, but I think the vast majority of players are more honorable than that. Almost all early draws are not due to prior agreement, but more out of convenience or fear of losing. If players were not allowed to have quick draws, they would simply erase this option from their minds and just play chess. Naturally, the older you are the harder it will be to adjust to the rule change. The ten-year-olds who will be our stars in the next decade will have no problem because they will not have known any other situation. Take adjournments: today no one cares that you can't adjourn your games after the first time-control (although Kramnik managed to resurrect this dead practice in his match against Deep Fritz). Today's teenage chess players would think you insane if you told them that Botvinnik used to be able to stop a game in progress, go have his assistants analyze the position for several hours, and come back with analysis that had been polished and spit-shined for him. Of course, computers really precipitated the demise of this ridiculous exercise, but it didn't seem so ridiculous back then. It was just accepted as the way things are.

Even for players who are less than honorable, it is possible for organizers to send the message. If a game ends in a quick perpetual check between two players most everyone knows to be friends, any number of things can be done, from warning to fining the players. It's highly unlikely to have games end in quick perpetuals in the first place so if this were to happen again, then collusion would be clear. I think that ninety-nine percent of all players are honorable and would not even think of doing something like that, but some strong measures can nevertheless be agreed on by FIDE and the national federations.

I do not pretend to know the exact solution to this as I have not thought through every possible situation. I hope FIDE will seriously take up this issue at one of its future meetings. I know Mr. Ilyumzhinov has been trying various methods of making the game more accessible to a wider audience, some of which have met with limited success. Possibly the idea of regulating draw offers will be one of the easier changes to enact. No doubt, the world's top players can expedite this change if they can come to some agreement. For the good of chess, we can only hope that they do.


Maurice Ashley
firstblackgm@aol.com