Chess is the occident's intellectual game par excellence. It is lauded for its determinism, its clarity and its light but potent theme - end the enemy king's life! But as an abstract game, chess has been criticized for one thing; It's high draw percentage among professional players.
In tournament at the highest levels, between forty and fifty per of all games played cent are agreed a draw. There are a few ways this can happen. If too many pieces are taken off the board, there may be insufficient material left for one player to mate the other' king, or a player may have no legal move left to play, or if the same position is reached three times either player may demand a draw. The first option is common because it can be hard to pull away to get a good advantage in a high level game, the second less so because a good player will know to avoid this situation, and the third is most often reached as a loosing player finds two moves to alternate between, where the choice of a not obvious reply from the opposition would be enough to tip the balance.
The two ways in which professionals might find their way into a draw is interesting. The one puts demands on the stronger player to pull ahead, and the other on the loosing player to salvage an otherwise lost game by finding these forcing sequences. The game, in other ways is rigged towards a slight equilibrium. You cannot expect to take a smaller force into battle and win on a whim.
I think the chance of a draw then should be counted as removing elements of chance from a game which holds this to be one of it's strengths. And to strengthen this notion, let us look at the intellectual game par excellence of the orient and see how this handles draws.
It doesn't. Go, or Wei Chi as it is known in china, is a land grabbing game with the additional idea that surrounding your enemy captures his soldiers. As in chess the first mover is considered to have an advantage. Therefore points are awarded before hand to the second player to even the core. Within the modern history of the game it was decided that among these points would be awarded a half-point, so that the score would never be even, and the winner would always be decided. The total amount of points awarded in go are in the dozens, if not more. How much of a winner are you, then, if you beat your opponent by half a point?
A draw in chess can be a victory for a weaker opponent - or for those of even strength a concession that today one was not better than the other. But it is not a bad thing - not at all.
