From: mwj@beta.lanl.gov (William Johnson)
Subject: Re: Draw offers (was Re: More Reshevsky)
Summary: More foaming at the mouth re Bronstein, backgammon, etc. 
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 18:40:12 GMT

In article <1992Apr15.185125.13679@cis.uab.edu> sloan@cis.uab.edu (Kenneth Sloan) writes:
>In article <1992Apr15.161922.13987@newshost.lanl.gov> mwj@beta.lanl.gov (William Johnson) writes:
[quote from my article omitted]
> I have heard (credible) stories revolving around a
>grandmaster(!) not knowing the details of castling.  It should be no
>surprise that the draw-offer-procedure is misunderstood.  We'll never
>outgrow our need for arbiters!

Castling indeed can get as weird as draw offers.  At a tournament in 1974 (I
think Manila), Ribli won a game by forfeit when his opponent (Quinteros, I
think) failed to appear because of a scheduling mixup.  Ribli cited FIDE and
tournament rules and insisted, against vocal opposition from many of the
other GMs playing, that the forfeit stand.  One of the most vocal critics of
Ribli's actions was Hort, who as luck would have it was due to play Ribli in
the next round.  In their game Ribli castled by moving his rook first.  Hort
jumped up, ran to an arbiter, said "He wants to play by the rules, so so will
I.  I demand a rook move."  After some head-scratching it was ascertained that
the proper response was not to force a rook move, but to give the offender a
warning.  Hort said, "Well, give him a warning," and Ribli was duly warned.
This bit of silliness likely had something to do with removal of that fatuous
rule from the book.

There is a difference, however, compared to the draw-offer muddle.  It is
clear that some players *do* use draw offers as a psychological weapon ...
By contrast, rook-first castling is usually just a screwup.

>>  I don't know the details of this particular story, but
>>Reshevsky has been pointed out (by Robert Byrne among others) for his "artful
>>use of draw offers," to use Byrne's words.  Let me see if I correctly recall
>>Bronstein's notes to his game with Reshevsky from the 1953 Candidates':
[notes omitted -- BTW, I got them right within a word or two, quote drawn from
my friend Jim Marfia's translation of the book]
>
>As written (quoted?) this says more about Bronstein than Reshevsky.  "Are
>you playing for a win?" is *not* a draw offer.  It's also probably not
>correct behavior,  but it's not a draw offer.  

As John Tomas has pointed out, it *IS* a draw offer, and was considered such
at the time.

Bronstein also cites the game Boleslavsky-Najdorf from that tournament, in
which the following exchange occurred:

	Najdorf (who has been defending a microscopically inferior, extremely
	dull position for some moves and would be delighted to get a draw):
	"Did you play that move for a draw?" [in the context of the day, this
	amounted to a draw offer -- MWJ]

	Boleslavsky: "No, not really."

	Najdorf: "So you played it for a win?"

	Boleslavsky: "Mmmmm... partly."

	Najdorf: "Maybe you played that move to lose!?"

	Boleslavsky: "I played the move that met the needs of the position."

See, GMs have fun at chess too! :-)  (P.S. The game ended in a draw.)

>>Sometimes I wonder why high-level chess hasn't adopted a signaling system for
>>reducing draw-offer shenanigans -- something like the bidding cards used in
>>tournament bridge or backgammon's doubling cube.
>
>The doubling cube idea is a bit more radical.  I've thought about it a
>bit, and finally concluded that any reasonable scheme would lead to even
>shorter and less interesting "grandmaster draws".

Lest I be misunderstood, I wasn't advocating the use of the doubling cube
itself, what with the obvious baggage of added value for the game; I just
meant that in backgammon, there is an obvious visual cue as to who has the
option of upping the ante.  Maybe some similar visual cue could be passed to
indicate a draw offer -- a card bearing a stylized picture of an olive
branch? :-)

Actually, I wonder how chess *could* take advantage of the doubling cube
exactly as used in backgammon.  Say something like this: The cube starts in
Black's possession and is offered and accepted (or dropped) precisely as in
backgammon.  If the game ends in a draw, it is replayed with colors reversed
and the cube again in the hands of the new Black player.  A match (maybe played
at game/30) according to these rules might be *very* interesting!

-- 
Bill Johnson				| "This is a bit complicated, so let
Los Alamos National Laboratory		| me explain it backwards."  (first
Los Alamos, New Mexico USA		| line of a memo from a fellow Los
!cmcl2!lanl!mwj (mwj@lanl.gov)		| Alamos physicist who will go unnamed)