English Chess Forum

Why dont leagues implement three points for a win one point for a draw like in football?

It would get rid of a lot of draws and make the game more exciting.

Why dont the ECF follow Jimmy Hill's advice....

In the individual games within a league match? Think about it for a little bit and you'll realise that it would be supremely pointless

If you mean 3 pts for winning a league match/1 for a draw then if you must, but drawn *matches* really aren't all that common or something to oppose.

Joshua, as Martin says, it would be meaningless for a league match. It can be done in tournaments and was introduced into the FIDE Laws of Chess some years ago at myu instigation on Michael Basman's request. Some tournaments such as the London Chess Classic top event have used it.

It has not proven popular. Such games should have a different rating system. There are few of them, this has not been bothered with. For a Swiss it would have the disadvantage that last round results would become very important and lead to more cheating by throwing games.
I suspect the lack of 3/10 events is mainly due to inertia.
You could also have 10 points for a win with Black.
9 points for a win with White.
5 points for a draw with Black.
4 points for a draw with White
1 points for a loss with Black
0 points for a loss with White
ETC.

I actually quite like this system you have here Stewart, it definitely puts the onus on white to achieve more with his opening advantage, and rewards black for good defending (plus is nice if you have an opponent playing an exceedingly drawish white opening, that you will still get the lions share of the points when the inevitable result occurs)

Given the pairing rules of most tournaments, I suspect all Stewart's system will do is make "most blacks" the automatic first tie-breaker. Well, I suppose it's as good as any other arbitrary tie-breaker.

IM Jack Rudd wrote:Given the pairing rules of most tournaments, I suspect all Stewart's system will do is make "most blacks" the automatic first tie-breaker. Well, I suppose it's as good as any other arbitrary tie-breaker.

It could make Swiss pairings a bit awkward, unless Black's extra point is ignored for pairing purposes

3 points for a win was introduced in the Football League with two aims:
(1) Reduce the number of draws
(2) Increase attacking play

In the first season with three points for a win, the number of draws went up. As for attacking play, the number of goals went down.

Alex Holowczak wrote:
In the first season with three points for a win, the number of draws went up. As for attacking play, the number of goals went down.

You might perhaps suppose that the pain of giving your rivals 3 points exceeded the pain of only getting one point yourself.

The London Classic used 3-1-0 in some of its earlier years. Didn't that just make number of losses the tie break?

Roger de Coverly wrote:

Alex Holowczak wrote:
In the first season with three points for a win, the number of draws went up. As for attacking play, the number of goals went down.

You might perhaps suppose that the pain of giving your rivals 3 points exceeded the pain of only getting one point yourself.

Indeed. It's a bit like the scoring system in rugby union. 5/7 points for a try and 3 for a penalty, rather than the old days when it was 3/5 points for a try and 3 points for a penalty, now just means that defenses are willing to give up penalties to not concede tries. Increasingly defenses commit penalties, and eventually someone gets yellow carded for persisting infringements. When the game was originally conceived, you only got points for goals; scoring a try just meant you could try to score a goal.

Roger de Coverly wrote:The London Classic used 3-1-0 in some of its earlier years. Didn't that just make number of losses the tie break?

The tie-break was number of wins, so it meant WLL was better than DDD. But that ignores that WLL puts 6 points into the field that DDD doesn't, so your 3 points is worth less really.

Some of us remember rugby with 4 points for a try. Some of us rejoiced in a 3 penalties to 2 tries win against the Welsh - we had a geography fieldtrip to Pembrokeshire the following week.

Best rule in football was when they introduced the rugby rule on retreating 10m/yds on dissent - if they continued football would be far more exciting if more goals is what you want. Trying to convince the excitement of a 90 minute football match to a chess game of 2.5-3 hours, 4.5 hours or 6+ hours is meaningless too. Give me 80 minutes of Rugby Union as a better sport.

As for chess I do not think it achieves anything other than players continuing in obviously dead drawn positions.
Also there is enough excitement in players arguing if too many blacks or whites in every tournament or league match as well as issues such as moaning about pairings and upfloats and downfloats.

Some leagues/clubs still use such a 3-1-0 scoring system.

As for cheating or deals on chess results I agree with Stewart the wider the variations on scoring are likely to lead to more disputes or accusations than 1-1/2-0, whereas at the lower levels we are increasingly aware of our own variability on results.