I've never understood why people play 5 0 instead of 4 1. Everybody can hold/win the idiot positions at 1 second/move, so it resembles real chess more, but I guess people actually prefer results that don't correspond to positions. Shrug.

I would say alot more people feel along the same lines as you do than you might think. Everybody claims they hate the pointless flagging, but nobody plays with an increment. It doesn't make much sense.

It'd be awesome if ICC would implement a 5 2 pool, or even a 4 1 or whatever. Anything with an increment. But I doubt they would. Adding a whole new rating category, splitting up the 5-minute pool, etc seems.. unlikely.

^^ Yeah just as likely as ICC making a 3-minute pool.

A good number of people want it, but ICC doesn't care.

Wait, don't we pay ICC $ Money? Shouldn't our collective opinion actually Matter?

I'm not sure here.

WTF is wrong with people spamming draw offers/adjournment requests/abortion requests during blitz games??!? I've had a couple opponents in the last few days who go down material and then start offering draws over and over. Holy ****. It's annoying but I can't imagine they've ever actually gotten someone to flag or actually had someone accept the draw offer. Douchebags!

FWIW ICC deals with this pretty strictly. Just message it to complain.

It's the one thing I report people for since you can't (and probably wouldn't want to) block draw offers. It's just annoying and distracting even if it doesn't change the result of the game.

I wonder what's the sanction for that.... they can't offer draws anymore?

Anyone want to volunteer and spam draw offers so we can find out?

I always offer a draw in trivially drawn positions, actually even offered a draw to a guy who had lost on time with King and Knight against my King and Rook because he had clearly shown he could draw it the previous 20 moves. I was a team competition and I got some heat from my teammates, but that's just the way I play chess, even blitz. I don't care that much about the result, especially if I have shown nothing on the board, I mean come on, you are not ashamed to play on in a king and rook versus king and rook position? I've seen guys continue playing in King and Knight versus King and Knight. Don't want to be one of those guys.

However, this is only for TRIVIALLY drawn positions. If my opponent can make any kind of mistake, I play on and push for the win, and claim a win most of the time if his flag falls.

On playchess.com, earlier versions of the client let a dialog box pop up when a draw had been offered. This was a prime tool for douchebags to win on time in lost positions because you always had to accept or decline before you could move.

I once was cautioned by an admin because I offered draw in a completely drawn OCB ending with 2 vs 2 seconds. He said he would ban me if saw this again.

Well, they eventually changed the software, such that now, the draw button just blinks if your opponent has offered a draw, without hindering you to move. This was a pretty good invention and I wonder why ICC doesn't do it the same way.

There's no popup for draws on ICC either. It's just an annoying "Drawwwwww?" voice clip plays.

This (and other reasons) is why I have all sounds OFF on ICC settings.

One thing's for sure, nothing feels better when somebody tries to scum you for time in a dead drawn ending, but you actually move faster and beat them on time instead. Especially when they frantically realise their fate and start trying to offer draws.

How do you feel about bullet opening techniques like 1. d4 g6 2. Bh6 ?
One that I face occasionally is 1. e4 c5; 2. Nf3 d5 , because I always premove 3.d4. Really annoying, but all the same I do win a fair amount of these anyway and I always throw a line of abuse in the person's face before censoring them.

That would be splitting one generally healthy pool into two not-so-healthy pools. And adding a rather redundant rating to an already long list. I can understand why they don't do this.

If your opponent really only is trying to flag you without trying to improve his position you can claim draw. I don't know if this is possible on line, but you should know this rule when playing tournament chess or playing for your chess club, i've seen many a game lost where the loser could have claimed draw and probably would have gotten it.

Is this a FIDE rule, USCF rule, or something entirely different? I've never seen a rule that claims your opponent has to "try to improve his position" and I'd be pretty damn suspicious of one, since who is going to judge such a thing??

it's a FIDE rule for rapidplay finishes (the last period of the game, if there is no increment), article 10.2. The rule is generally explained as "when your opponent cannot or is not trying to win the game by normal means", though I don't have the exact verbiage to hand. Normal means = not on time.

This comes up in literally every tournament I have played with no increment.

Wow, thanks for that, RT. It just shows you how incredibly ignorant I am of the FIDE rules. It looks like that article combines "insufficient losing chances" with the opponent not trying to actually win the game. Does this cause much controversy? I've won some endgames that simply required patient probing and I could easily see someone claiming I'm doing nothing more than trying to run out the clock if they didn't really understand the position.

it causes difficulty to inexperienced or stupid or senile arbiters, of whom there are a few. Mostly the rule of thumb is if you have to think about it, it's not a draw. Really you have to be moving Kg8/Kh8/Kg8/Kh8 or similar to convince the arbiter you aren't trying to win on the board.

"Insufficient losing chances" sounds like the worst rule ever, where a 1500 rated arbiter really has to judge "yeah I think this 2400 player should definitely have the technique to draw this, but a 1900 player would have chances to lose it".

That sounds very close to the insufficient losing chances rule.

That's not how the rule works. (Thankfully!)

• A draw can be claimed when a player has less than 5 minutes on his clock in a sudden death time control.
• In order to accept the claim, the director must believe that "a Class C player would have little chance to lose the position against a Master with both players having ample time.
• If the claim is denied, then the claimant loses 1 minute off his clock.
• If the claim is neither clearly correct nor incorrect, then the director may subtract half the claimant's remaining time and continue the game with a 5 second time delay.

Sadly, even with the attempt at clear wording, this gets screwed up all the time. Many, many times that the claim should be denied outright, the director decides that a delay clock should be used. Only positions that are trivially, trivially drawn should be upheld. B + wrong rook pawn, K+R v K+R, K+2N v K, etc. Positions that are most likely drawn, but allow room to screw up should warrant a time delay. i.e. Opposite colored bishops with 2 non-passed pawns per side, etc.

Not so in Fides blitz rules though.
There you can practically never claim a draw.

I think the position needs to be a fairly clear-cut draw too.
Its not enough to claim a draw if the player playing for time (Moving pieces around at random.) got a big advantage, but no clue how to win it.

You wanna know the best line against the Sveshnikov in bullet?



I also netted a healthy load in the line 1.c4 b6 2.g3 Bb7 3.Bg2 quite often.

Yup, the arbiter is the weakest link. I've witnessed so many ridiculous decisions that it's not funny anymore.

The best one was when a friend of mine was in the process of building a mating attack in a OCB middlegame with all rooks and queens still on the board. This was the final round of an open and the opponent claimed draw in the sudden death phase... The arbiter had like 1600 and declared the game drawn coz' of the OCB

This cost my mate like €150, which he would have won in case of victory...

This is what I recalled as well. There's no possibility to claim draw in blitz games except in positions with insufficient mating material (which would be drawn anyway if the other guys flag fell).

The §10.2 draw claim is only for games subject to FIDE rapid chess rules. This business is actually so sickening that I can't wait for the point where FIDE declared increment time controls to be mandatory (this would render §10.2 obsolete).