Thursday 8 March 2007

Draw of the Year

With many tournaments introducing regulations concerning the offering draws before move X it is worth looking at an example of when the rules are no help at all.
The following game was reported to me by Stewart Rueben from the Gibraltar Masters (which had a No Draw Offers before move 40 rule) earlier this year.
Kuzubov v Sokolov
1 d4 d5 2 c4 dxc4 3 Nf3 Nf6 4 e3 Be6!? 5 Nc3 Nc6 6 Ng5 Bg4 7 Bc4 Bxd1 8 Bxf7+ Kd7 9 Be6+ Ke8 10 Bf7+ Draw.
Rueben then wonders whether the arbiters should have ordered Kuzubov to choose a different 10th move.
In this case it appears that Kuzubov wanted the draw, while Sokolov wanted to play on, but not to the extent of being worse after 7 ... e6 8.f3.
To me this raises the question of whether attempts to make chess more "exciting" create a whole new set of problems for players, arbiters, and organisers. My initial belief is that it will, but maybe someone will come up with a problem free way of making such regulations work.

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