Qiyu Zhou and the number of draws

[Wayne Komer]

Qiyu Zhou and the number of draws

March 22, 2018

There is an interesting article on draws by Qiyu Zhou at the ChessBase site:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/has-th...hess-increased

The intro: People are generally worried about draws, which are often considered "boring", where games may last up to six hours. To the common viewer (non-chess player), this may seem dull, and many believe this has led to a decline in sponsorship. But what do the statistics tell us? Using data now available, Qiyu Zhou, a remarkably young scientist has undertaken a thorough study of the numbers and provides a paper on her findings.

The paper is: Draws in Chess over the Last 40 Years - A Statistical Analysis

The bio: WGM Qiyu Zhou [pronounced Chee-you Jo], born in 2000, is a Canadian chess player who has competed for team Canada at the Women's Chess Olympiad since 2014 and who won the Canadian women's championship in 2016.

Qiyu learned to play chess at the age of four in France. In late 2004 the family moved to Finland, and Qiyu won the Finnish Youth Chess Championships five times (in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010) in the U10 Open section. Also in 2010, she won the Nordic School Chess Championships in the U11 Open division in Sweden. In 2008, she won the silver medal in the U8 Girls section at the World Youth Chess Championship in Vung Tiu, Vietnam.

In 2011, Qiyu transferred chess federations from Finland to Canada. She won the Canadian Youth Chess Championship in 2012 and 2013, in the Girls U-12 and Girls U-14 sections respectively. She won the Girls U-14 World Youth Championships in Durban, South Africa, 2014.

Also in 2014, Zhou made her debut at the Women's Chess Olympiad in Tromso, Norway. She played board four for the Canadian team scoring 6.5/9 points. In the same year she also took part in the World Youth Under-16 Chess Olympiad in Gyor, Hungary playing board four for team Canada, which finished fifth. She finished first in the U-18 Girls category at the North American Youth Chess Championships in 2015 Toluca, Mexico. As a result, she was automatically awarded by FIDE the title Woman International Master (WIM). In September 2016, Zhou won the Canadian women's championship and as a result qualified to play in the Women's World Chess Championship 2017.

Some onsite comments

- This is a nice analysis and this young lady may have a promising career in the expanding field of data analysis and data science.

Unfortunately though, it doesn't address the core issue. The problem is not draw rate as a whole, but the preponderance of non-games.... Unplayed, GM draws

A well fought, fighting draw is a good chess game. If all of these draws were of the 'real,' fighting variety nobody would have a problem with that. Most chessplayers are aware that a 'real' game among two strong players, well played on both sides, should end in a draw more often than not. That is simply the nature of chess.

Parsing these statistics to weed out the GM draws is a trickier exercise. You can try to separate them based on number of moves (shorter draws tend to be non-games) but that wouldn't be entirely accurate because some short games are 'real' games, and many non-games are 30 moves or longer. The latter case is not an obvious or literal 'GM draw', but both players are happy with a draw and neither player is striving or doing much to break the equilibrium.

Whether the rate of non-games has gone up over the past 40 years or not, also isn't the core issue. The core issue is that, regardless of where it's trending, there are far too many of them. And there is no doubt that turns many potential followers off from the game

- I'd say the type of tournament is a very important factor too. It would be logical for the draw rate to be higher in a match than in a Swiss open. Would this explain the higher draw rate in the 1970s, where a significant part of the small number of games was played in Candidates and World Championship matches?

- Agreed, the problem of rating inflation affecting the result should have been avoided.

Also, rapid and blitz games should have been excluded as those obviously skew the results, especially considering there are more rapid and blitz events these days.

Even classical time controls have become faster leading to more mistakes and less draws.

The current Candidates are spectacular, but all we have to do is look at the qualifiers for these Candidates:

Sharjah 2017 - 74.1% draws
Moscow 2017 - 70% draws
Geneva 2017 - 61% draws
Palma 2017 - 73% draws

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Qiyu Zhou and the number of draws

Qiyu Zhou and the number of draws

March 22, 2018

There is an interesting article on draws by Qiyu Zhou at the ChessBase site:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/has-th...hess-increased

The intro: People are generally worried about draws, which are often considered "boring", where games may last up to six hours. To the common viewer (non-chess player), this may seem dull, and many believe this has led to a decline in sponsorship. But what do the statistics tell us? Using data now available, Qiyu Zhou, a remarkably young scientist has undertaken a thorough study of the numbers and provides a paper on her findings.

The paper is: Draws in Chess over the Last 40 Years - A Statistical Analysis

The bio: WGM Qiyu Zhou [pronounced Chee-you Jo], born in 2000, is a Canadian chess player who has competed for team Canada at the Women's Chess Olympiad since 2014 and who won the Canadian women's championship in 2016.

Qiyu learned to play chess at the age of four in France. In late 2004 the family moved to Finland, and Qiyu won the Finnish Youth Chess Championships five times (in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010) in the U10 Open section. Also in 2010, she won the Nordic School Chess Championships in the U11 Open division in Sweden. In 2008, she won the silver medal in the U8 Girls section at the World Youth Chess Championship in Vung Tiu, Vietnam.

In 2011, Qiyu transferred chess federations from Finland to Canada. She won the Canadian Youth Chess Championship in 2012 and 2013, in the Girls U-12 and Girls U-14 sections respectively. She won the Girls U-14 World Youth Championships in Durban, South Africa, 2014.

Also in 2014, Zhou made her debut at the Women's Chess Olympiad in Tromso, Norway. She played board four for the Canadian team scoring 6.5/9 points. In the same year she also took part in the World Youth Under-16 Chess Olympiad in Gyor, Hungary playing board four for team Canada, which finished fifth. She finished first in the U-18 Girls category at the North American Youth Chess Championships in 2015 Toluca, Mexico. As a result, she was automatically awarded by FIDE the title Woman International Master (WIM). In September 2016, Zhou won the Canadian women's championship and as a result qualified to play in the Women's World Chess Championship 2017.

Some onsite comments

- This is a nice analysis and this young lady may have a promising career in the expanding field of data analysis and data science.

Unfortunately though, it doesn't address the core issue. The problem is not draw rate as a whole, but the preponderance of non-games.... Unplayed, GM draws

A well fought, fighting draw is a good chess game. If all of these draws were of the 'real,' fighting variety nobody would have a problem with that. Most chessplayers are aware that a 'real' game among two strong players, well played on both sides, should end in a draw more often than not. That is simply the nature of chess.

Parsing these statistics to weed out the GM draws is a trickier exercise. You can try to separate them based on number of moves (shorter draws tend to be non-games) but that wouldn't be entirely accurate because some short games are 'real' games, and many non-games are 30 moves or longer. The latter case is not an obvious or literal 'GM draw', but both players are happy with a draw and neither player is striving or doing much to break the equilibrium.

Whether the rate of non-games has gone up over the past 40 years or not, also isn't the core issue. The core issue is that, regardless of where it's trending, there are far too many of them. And there is no doubt that turns many potential followers off from the game

- I'd say the type of tournament is a very important factor too. It would be logical for the draw rate to be higher in a match than in a Swiss open. Would this explain the higher draw rate in the 1970s, where a significant part of the small number of games was played in Candidates and World Championship matches?

- Agreed, the problem of rating inflation affecting the result should have been avoided.

Also, rapid and blitz games should have been excluded as those obviously skew the results, especially considering there are more rapid and blitz events these days.

Even classical time controls have become faster leading to more mistakes and less draws.

The current Candidates are spectacular, but all we have to do is look at the qualifiers for these Candidates:

Sharjah 2017 - 74.1% draws
Moscow 2017 - 70% draws
Geneva 2017 - 61% draws
Palma 2017 - 73% draws

I'm going to assume this was an honest mistake.... Qiyu Zhou credits herself in the article with being "former U-14 World Champion". Shouldn't that be "former GIRLS U-14 World Champion"?

Zhou also writes that "fighting chess" draws are not a problem because it is in "the nature of chess." Does this then mean that a tournament where ALL games are drawn by fighting chess is a satisfactory tournament?

Draws being in "the nature of chess".... this IS part of the problem! It indicates that there is something wrong with chess.

Imagine a hockey game where after the opening faceoff, the players of the team that lost possession all skated to their net and en masse parked themselves in the crease to block any possible shot from getting through. Of course this doesn't happen, because both teams are out to win, and that means they have to play to score even if it means they might give up a goal.

Ask yourself, why does baseball not accept ties? Why does it insist on extra innings until a winner is determined? The answer: TIES ARE EVIL! No one wants ties. The famous quote that a tie game is "like kissing your sister" comes to mind.

So chess players, if you want increased sponsorship and increased non-chess-player interest in chess, you must NOT accept draws in chess. Playing safe, solid chess is not acceptable and should be shunned, it should be viewed as badly as the hockey example I gave above.

But the elite chess world won't let this happen. Have you noticed the commentary on the current Candidates regarding Mameyderov? He has a past reputation as a non-compromise player. Yet now, here in the Candidates, he has suddenly transformed into a pussycat, accepting short draws in order to increase his rest time.

This acts against the best interest of chess. Players who do this need to be exonerated, embarrassed, reduced to the pathetic cowards they are. Chess culture needs to change. Draws need to be seen as totally EVIL, even worse than kissing your sister!

It is not "in the nature of chess" for games to be drawn. It is "in the nature of cowardly chess" for games to be drawn. The fact that chess players accept draws as being in "the nature of chess" is a comment on chess players, not on draws in chess. It means chess players do not understand what is needed to increase sponsorship and spectator interest in chess. Draws do not have to be tolerated. They can be almost totally removed.

Wait, you may say, what about fighting draws? The entire approach to draws requires thinking out of the box. For example, let's consider where a game ends with one side having King + Knight versus lone King. Draw, right?......... NO! Although checkmate is impossible, the tie can be broken by material count.

So if we took all the possible scenarios for fighting draws -- 3-time repetition, stalemate, 50-move rule. lack of mating material -- and for all of them we resort to material count to break the draw, then for many of them, we no longer have a draw. As an aid to this, we could even decide that Bishops are materially worth 4 points versus 3 points for Knights, which would make trades of Bishop for Knight have a very different dynamic.

If you accept weird and fanciful tie-breaks in tournament standings, why can't you accept a tie-break that is far less fanciful in a game itself?

Now, if we really wanted to cut draws to the bare minimum, we would start with no agreed draws ever. Then we would add the material count provision. Then we would add that two players who play to a draw where even the material count is even... shall not receive 1/2 point for the draw, but rather 1/10 point! Thus such a drawn game doesn't even get dignified with the awarding of 1 full point. Maybe THAT will get the message across....

DRAWS ARE EVIL!

Of course, none of this is going to happen because the chess world is simply incapable of getting itself out of a wet paper bag, let alone the mess it is in. This is my final post on ChessTalk, since it is going away and neither I nor my company have any desire to save it, and so my final message to the chess world via this medium is to say that to save your game at the elite level, to give elite level chess any chance of surviving beyond another decade or so, draws need to be seen as EVIL and treated as such.

Qiyu Zhou is a very intelligent young woman, but shows lack of creativity and understanding on this issue. Draws cannot contiue to be "in the nature of chess" if elite level chess is to survive in a very tough economic world.

Yes, yes, I know there will be arguments about the history of chess, we can't go against the great traditions.... well, to that I will once again resort to that great quote from H.G. Wells.... "Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative."

[Larry Castle]

Re: Qiyu Zhou and the number of draws

I'm going to assume this was an honest mistake.... Qiyu Zhou credits herself in the article with being "former U-14 World Champion". Shouldn't that be "former GIRLS U-14 World Champion"?

Zhou also writes that "fighting chess" draws are not a problem because it is in "the nature of chess." Does this then mean that a tournament where ALL games are drawn by fighting chess is a satisfactory tournament?

Draws being in "the nature of chess".... this IS part of the problem! It indicates that there is something wrong with chess.

Imagine a hockey game where after the opening faceoff, the players of the team that lost possession all skated to their net and en masse parked themselves in the crease to block any possible shot from getting through. Of course this doesn't happen, because both teams are out to win, and that means they have to play to score even if it means they might give up a goal.

Ask yourself, why does baseball not accept ties? Why does it insist on extra innings until a winner is determined? The answer: TIES ARE EVIL! No one wants ties. The famous quote that a tie game is "like kissing your sister" comes to mind.

So chess players, if you want increased sponsorship and increased non-chess-player interest in chess, you must NOT accept draws in chess. Playing safe, solid chess is not acceptable and should be shunned, it should be viewed as badly as the hockey example I gave above.

But the elite chess world won't let this happen. Have you noticed the commentary on the current Candidates regarding Mameyderov? He has a past reputation as a non-compromise player. Yet now, here in the Candidates, he has suddenly transformed into a pussycat, accepting short draws in order to increase his rest time.

This acts against the best interest of chess. Players who do this need to be exonerated, embarrassed, reduced to the pathetic cowards they are. Chess culture needs to change. Draws need to be seen as totally EVIL, even worse than kissing your sister!

It is not "in the nature of chess" for games to be drawn. It is "in the nature of cowardly chess" for games to be drawn. The fact that chess players accept draws as being in "the nature of chess" is a comment on chess players, not on draws in chess. It means chess players do not understand what is needed to increase sponsorship and spectator interest in chess. Draws do not have to be tolerated. They can be almost totally removed.

Wait, you may say, what about fighting draws? The entire approach to draws requires thinking out of the box. For example, let's consider where a game ends with one side having King + Knight versus lone King. Draw, right?......... NO! Although checkmate is impossible, the tie can be broken by material count.

So if we took all the possible scenarios for fighting draws -- 3-time repetition, stalemate, 50-move rule. lack of mating material -- and for all of them we resort to material count to break the draw, then for many of them, we no longer have a draw. As an aid to this, we could even decide that Bishops are materially worth 4 points versus 3 points for Knights, which would make trades of Bishop for Knight have a very different dynamic.

If you accept weird and fanciful tie-breaks in tournament standings, why can't you accept a tie-break that is far less fanciful in a game itself?

Now, if we really wanted to cut draws to the bare minimum, we would start with no agreed draws ever. Then we would add the material count provision. Then we would add that two players who play to a draw where even the material count is even... shall not receive 1/2 point for the draw, but rather 1/10 point! Thus such a drawn game doesn't even get dignified with the awarding of 1 full point. Maybe THAT will get the message across....

DRAWS ARE EVIL!

Of course, none of this is going to happen because the chess world is simply incapable of getting itself out of a wet paper bag, let alone the mess it is in. This is my final post on ChessTalk, since it is going away and neither I nor my company have any desire to save it, and so my final message to the chess world via this medium is to say that to save your game at the elite level, to give elite level chess any chance of surviving beyond another decade or so, draws need to be seen as EVIL and treated as such.

Qiyu Zhou is a very intelligent young woman, but shows lack of creativity and understanding on this issue. Draws cannot contiue to be "in the nature of chess" if elite level chess is to survive in a very tough economic world.

Yes, yes, I know there will be arguments about the history of chess, we can't go against the great traditions.... well, to that I will once again resort to that great quote from H.G. Wells.... "Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative."

Paul. Let me enlighten you as you obviously do not understand English.baseball or tournament chess.
EVIL- (adjective) profoundly immoral and malevolent.
EVIL- (Noun) profound immorality, wickedness and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.
Draws in chess are therefore not Evil by definition.
Baseball is a game that is comprised of 9 innings. Any inning may be tied along the way. If the game is tied after nine innings then there will be extra innings until a winner is decided. A chess tournament has a certain number of rounds. Think of a chess game during a tournament as an "inning". If the tournament is tied by score at the end of the tournament then there will be some sort of tiebreak system to determine the winner. There will be no tie at the end,therefore no sister kissing. Draws are as inevitable in chess as a tied inning in baseball or period in hockey,basketball or football. There will be a winner determined in the end somehow. I hope you can understand this simple concept.

[Erik Malmsten]

Re: Qiyu Zhou and the number of draws

Draws being in "the nature of chess".... this IS part of the problem! It indicates that there is something wrong with chess.

The entire approach to draws requires thinking out of the box. For example, let's consider where a game ends with one side having King + Knight versus lone King. Draw, right?......... NO! Although checkmate is impossible, the tie can be broken by material count.

So if we took all the possible scenarios for fighting draws -- 3-time repetition, stalemate, 50-move rule. lack of mating material -- and for all of them we resort to material count to break the draw, then for many of them, we no longer have a draw. As an aid to this, we could even decide that Bishops are materially worth 4 points versus 3 points for Knights, which would make trades of Bishop for Knight have a very different dynamic.

If you accept weird and fanciful tie-breaks in tournament standings, why can't you accept a tie-break that is far less fanciful in a game itself?

Now, if we really wanted to cut draws to the bare minimum, Then we would add the material count provision.

If a Bishop (4) is trapped it's not worth more than a Knight (3). Instead of material count, another system would be to count the number of squares pieces and pawns can go to, the player with the higher mobility, the higher number of possible moves wins. This can be claimed at the moment of stalemate, or 3-fold repetition, or 50 moves, or flagged without mating pieces, when both players agree not to continue (formerly an agreed draw). And a few games would still be tied!

[Caleb Petersen]

Re: Qiyu Zhou and the number of draws

I'm going to assume this was an honest mistake.... Qiyu Zhou credits herself in the article with being "former U-14 World Champion". Shouldn't that be "former GIRLS U-14 World Champion"?

Wait, you may say, what about fighting draws? The entire approach to draws requires thinking out of the box. For example, let's consider where a game ends with one side having King + Knight versus lone King. Draw, right?......... NO! Although checkmate is impossible, the tie can be broken by material count.

So if we took all the possible scenarios for fighting draws -- 3-time repetition, stalemate, 50-move rule. lack of mating material -- and for all of them we resort to material count to break the draw, then for many of them, we no longer have a draw. As an aid to this, we could even decide that Bishops are materially worth 4 points versus 3 points for Knights, which would make trades of Bishop for Knight have a very different dynamic.

If you accept weird and fanciful tie-breaks in tournament standings, why can't you accept a tie-break that is far less fanciful in a game itself?

Now, if we really wanted to cut draws to the bare minimum, we would start with no agreed draws ever. Then we would add the material count provision. Then we would add that two players who play to a draw where even the material count is even... shall not receive 1/2 point for the draw, but rather 1/10 point! Thus such a drawn game doesn't even get dignified with the awarding of 1 full point. Maybe THAT will get the message across....

You mentioned that this will be your last post on ChessTalk, so this is not really a response to you in particular, but rather to the issue of breaking draws, and the solution you suggest. No one wants to watch lifeless games. I think we can all agree on that. But to change chess so much as to remove draws entirely would not only break tradition (which you mentioned), but would also utterly and completely ruin chess. Why would a chess player continue to play on when down material when his opponent can just exchange everything down and win? Players would become extremely materialistic, and sacrificing for compensation would a thing of the past. Beautiful escapes like this (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1324924) would no longer exist. One could argue that Nakamura deserved to win the game because he had more material in the end, but I disagree on two counts. Firstly, as I said before, it's much more entertaining and exciting for spectators when something of this nature happens, and secondly, since Serper was able to find this fortress, he entirely deserved to draw.

With that said, I wouldn't be opposed to encouraging players to fight for the win by making a win worth 3 points, and a draw worth 1 (or something like that- the suggestion of 1/10 of a point for a draw as opposed to 1 for a win is a little bit much) as is done in one tournament (I seem to recall it is Bilbao?). I think too that tournaments like the 2018 Candidates show that top players are very capable of playing exciting chess, and can keep the spectators very entertained.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Qiyu Zhou and the number of draws

Paul. Let me enlighten you as you obviously do not understand English.baseball or tournament chess.
EVIL- (adjective) profoundly immoral and malevolent.
EVIL- (Noun) profound immorality, wickedness and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.
Draws in chess are therefore not Evil by definition.
Baseball is a game that is comprised of 9 innings. Any inning may be tied along the way. If the game is tied after nine innings then there will be extra innings until a winner is decided. A chess tournament has a certain number of rounds. Think of a chess game during a tournament as an "inning". If the tournament is tied by score at the end of the tournament then there will be some sort of tiebreak system to determine the winner. There will be no tie at the end,therefore no sister kissing. Draws are as inevitable in chess as a tied inning in baseball or period in hockey,basketball or football. There will be a winner determined in the end somehow. I hope you can understand this simple concept.

Well, I wanted that last post of mine to be my last post, but this I simply have to respond to. Let me enlighten you, Larry.

If it turns out that excessive draws destroy top level chess (by bankrupting the entire proceedings, due to lack of sponsor / spectator interest), then indeed the definition of "evil" that uses the word "malevolent" fits. Also, we could in that case say that FIDE doing nothing in the face of so many draws was being "wicked" for having ruined top level chess because many at the lower levels look up to the top levels with great interest and perhaps their own ambition to get there.

So when I say draws are evil, I am saying that excessive draws can and probably will ultimately have this effect. Therefore the word "evil" is apt. The point is, the attitude towards draws needs to change on the part of the players. When something is not going right -- and as evidence for that, we have the continuing financial struggles of Agon and the collapse of the Millionaire Chess Open and the fact that FIDE is talking about financial crisis -- the proper thing to do is to think out of the box to try and fix what isn't right.

As for your baseball analogy.... every tournament chess game is like an inning in baseball? I guess I could believe that if players were playing 9 games against each opponent in a tournament. And if baseball teams were awarded wins, losses, ties based on result of a single inning.

Obviously you are just going to go ahead and accept > 50% draw rate in top level chess. That's fine, but when top level chess ultimately goes bankrupt you'll be clueless as to what went wrong.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Qiyu Zhou and the number of draws

You mentioned that this will be your last post on ChessTalk, so this is not really a response to you in particular, but rather to the issue of breaking draws, and the solution you suggest. No one wants to watch lifeless games. I think we can all agree on that. But to change chess so much as to remove draws entirely would not only break tradition (which you mentioned), but would also utterly and completely ruin chess. Why would a chess player continue to play on when down material when his opponent can just exchange everything down and win? Players would become extremely materialistic, and sacrificing for compensation would a thing of the past. Beautiful escapes like this (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1324924) would no longer exist. One could argue that Nakamura deserved to win the game because he had more material in the end, but I disagree on two counts. Firstly, as I said before, it's much more entertaining and exciting for spectators when something of this nature happens, and secondly, since Serper was able to find this fortress, he entirely deserved to draw.

With that said, I wouldn't be opposed to encouraging players to fight for the win by making a win worth 3 points, and a draw worth 1 (or something like that- the suggestion of 1/10 of a point for a draw as opposed to 1 for a win is a little bit much) as is done in one tournament (I seem to recall it is Bilbao?). I think too that tournaments like the 2018 Candidates show that top players are very capable of playing exciting chess, and can keep the spectators very entertained.

This too deserves a response, because unlike Larry Castle you bring up some good points. You even suggest a new scoring system, so it seems you are a creative thinker.

Ok, so for the question of why would a player who is down material continue to play on if draws were broken by material count... excellent question. How about we borrow a page from the NHL? In the NHL, a win in regulation counts as 2 points and the loser gets 0 points. A win in overtime gives the winner 2 points but the loser gains a point. And an overtime tie gets both teams 1 point. Notice that the sum of the points awarded can be either 2 or 3.

So let's first of all eliminate fractional scores from chess. No 1/2 point anymore..... let's make a normal win in chess count for 10 points. Let's make a win by material count (when the game was drawn by normal means) give the winner 7 points and the loser 3 points. So far the sum of the awarded points is 10. But let's make a draw that is also tied by material count award LESS THAN 10 points. Ok, you think 1 point per player is too little, how about 2 points per player? It can't be 3 because that would be the same as losing by material count.

So a drawn game that was also even on material count would award only 4 points altogether. This is a good thing, it tells the players that draws are .... well, Mr. Castle objects to the word "evil" .... but I'm still gonna use it! :)

I also like Erik Malmsten's idea of using total piece mobility as another tie-breaker. Excellent way to think out of the box! This would favor Bishops over Knights because Knights can only have a maximum of 8 possible destination squares, whereas Bishops can have up to 14... but Bishops can be blocked and Knights can't.... would make for some very interesting endgame play! I really love that idea.

So with that idea in play, your point about fighting to obtain a fortress and hold a draw being a lost art in chess would be softened by the fact that endgames would be full of this new dynamic of players striving for piece mobility.