6/24/2019 – It is something little hard to imagine but yes, in the history of chess there was one occasion when FIDE had no certain type of play — such as Armageddon — to decide the winner in case of draw. For those who are unaware of the format, Armageddon is the ultimate form of tie-breaker in chess, where time-odds are there and Black just needs to draw the game to win the match and White must win the game to advance or be declared as the winner of the match.

10/11/2018 – The organisers of the 2019 Altibox Norway Chess tournament have unveiled a new format aimed at reducing the rate of draws. It's either "innovative" or "bizarre" depending on who you ask but is sure to be an interesting subject of debate in the months leading up to the June, 2019, tournament. We explain the new idea and check in on the Twitter reaction. Plus, have your say in our reader survey! | Photo: Lennart Ootes / NorwayChess.no

3/21/2018 – 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.

1/23/2018 – In the early 1980s Ken Thompson, working at the Bell Laboratories, generated one of the world’s first chess endgame databases — king and queen vs king and rook. At the time he explained to Frederic Friedel how this revolutionary new technology worked. He did it in the form of a parable: God calculating the 32-piece endgame and playing chess. It is an amusing thought experiment that has gained interesting relevance at the current time.

12/20/2017 – At the beginning of the London Chess Classic, in December 2017, the first 19 out of 20 games were drawn. Only Fabiano Caruana was able to win a game. Folks writing about the high percentage of draws called it disappointing and absurd. But why? Why is having a draw in chess such a bad thing? Only three things can happen in a chess game: White wins, black wins, or draw. Why such a hatred towards one of the out comes? | Photos: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

8/20/2015 – Arno Nickel is chess fan and a GM of correspondence chess. But he is worried about the future of correspondence chess. In June he published an Open Letter, in which he proposed to change the scoring system to address the problem of the high number of draws in correspondence chess. With a survey he invited chessplayers to a discussion. Now he presents the answers.

3/27/2008 – "I propose," writes one reader, "that a draw proposal should reduce the time at your disposal to 30 minutes, so you receive a great penalty at the beginning of the game, decreasing to no penalty when you have only 30 minutes or less (at the end of the game)." These and many other imaginative proposals have reached us in the past weeks on a problem that is occupying the thoughts of our readers.

11/10/2005 – Recently Ignatius Leong and Leung Weiwen made a very radical solution to the problem of too many draws in chess. This led to a vigorous debate amongst our readers – we bring you a selection of their often very interesting letters. But we start off with the voice of reason: John Nunn analyses the problem and proposes a much simpler solution.