Thursday, 21 July 2011

Deal or no deal

Assume you are defending an ending which you are pretty sure is a book draw (eg bishops of opposite colours or kings covering key squares). Your opponent has knocked back a draw offer, and it looks like it will be 50 further moves before you can go home. You try and claim a draw under 10.2 but as increments are being used the arbiter says no. However he offers you a deal. He will stop the game and put the position into a tablebase. However you must accept whatever result is returned (ie if it is a draw you get what you want, but if it is a loss, you get 0) Would you take this deal?

(Note: This is a based on a discussion *after* the completion of a tournament game between two regular readers of this blog.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

what happens if your winning?

Garvin said...

I would imagine if you claim a draw from Shaun's suggestion and your claim is not supported, then you would lose.

I think that is the only way it could work, otherwise some players would try this idea if they knew if it showed a win they would get the one point.

Anonymous said...

Play on. The opponent will get bored soon enough at your iron-clad defence.

Shaun Press said...

@Garvin. If you claim a draw and it turns out to be a win for you, you should only get the draw as, as you've said, you might claim in a position you don't know how to win.