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Kevin Pacey wrote on Sat, Jun 7 06:58 AM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Thu Jun 5 05:18 PM:

To try to put things into a clearer perspective on that score, if I can, I'd note that are physical team sports leagues, where decisive results must happen in a given game (except for exhibition games, for example). For those, there are unavoidably significant (and undeniably) 'chance-based' events that occur when mere humans participate. Such as in baseball games played in North America's Major League Baseball, where one team must win - there are no draw results allowed, in the regular or playoff season, there, but at least the losers (and their fans) can at times with more truth (than in a board game of more arguably 'pure skill', like for many CVs) console themselves with the thought that they more or less lost because of an unlucky occurance, especially if the teams in question were closely matched by ranking/odds-makers.

In (FIDE) chess itself, games resulting in draws are rather commonplace, as is very well known. Many [potential] fans of chess (maybe more so at lower rating levels, if only due to mistakes being more frequent, increasing the chance of a decisive result for a given game between such players?!) lament, sometimes, that perhaps too many (percentage-wise, in a given database, for example) draws happen as a final result of a given game, at elite level, these days.

However, I recall that I've read somewhere in a chess book long ago, that was written by a Danish grandmaster (I think his name was Lars Bo Hansen) words to the effect that he was not very concerned by draws being possible in chess. He argued they are allowed by the scoring system of chess, and that they seem a perfectly natural and logical result for games that are well played by both sides. Plus, why should he need to risk a loss (if forced to, too routinely) by taking big chances?

Note that, even if one regularly wanted to take big chances to win when starting from a given position in a given game of chess, that may sometimes be none too easy to arrange (i.e. to attempt to sufficiently sharpen the position on the chess board), so as for a chess player to have a realistic chance of successfully avoiding a drawn result in the end (say against a reasonably skilled opponent). Especially so if the given chess position that has already been reached is already quite drawish (though an overly ambitious opponent might be hoped for, even in such a case, sometimes). That's especially noteworthy when a draw would be otherwise fully satisfactory to a player like Lars Bo (perhaps a fairly common situation during a given elite level player's chess event, if he were playing a given game with the Black army, when it's not a must-win situation, for such a player).


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