Chess without draws

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Haworth, Guy^{; †; *} | Cazenave, Tristan^{; **}

Affiliations: Reading, UK

Correspondence: [*] This article was completed by the author prior to his passing and was edited for publication by Tristan Cazenave, to whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail: tristan.cazenave@lamsade.dauphine.fr.

Correspondence: [**] Corresponding author. E-mail: tristan.cazenave@lamsade.dauphine.fr.

Note: [†] Deceased.

Abstract: The prevalence of draws in chess is an increasing concern: in the ICCF’s 2017 ‘MT van Oosteram’ Correspondence event, all 56 games were drawn. This article reports a ‘Mobility Chess’ proposal by ‘Aloril’ which addresses this problem. He prefers to retain his anonymity but should be regarded as the primary author of this paper. He has defined a logical sequence of increasingly subtle and decreasingly rewarded ‘winning’ goals Gk. Each position in itself associates with both an immediate achievement Aj of goal Gj – and an ultimate, best-achievable goal Gk, k⩽j. Therefore, Aloril has eliminated the draw in Mobility Chess and shown how Chess can reduce the incidence of draws as much as required.

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-210188

Journal: ICGA Journal, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 94-101, 2021