Worrying About Forced Draws

When a new opening course is released, people ask lots of questions.  "Is it good for my rating?" or "Is it more tactical or positional?" are very common, as are, "What line do you recommend against the London?"  One of the most persistent questions, though, is a rather odd one: "Are there many forced draws?"

This question fascinates me.  There are people legitimately worried that an opening might lead straight to a draw, no discussion.  This drawish tendency is a make-or-break consideration, where some people will, apparently, not entertain an opening if a draw is even remotely possible. Like chemtrails, this is largely worrying about nothing.

If you are an amateur chess player, you have very little to worry about forced draws.

Amateur Games Are Naturally Decisive

It's well known that weaker players have more decisive games.  This makes perfect sense: chess is a game of mistakes, and weaker players make more mistakes, so naturally there are more chances to play for a win.  This reaches absurd rates online, where even the slowest time controls have about a 7% draw rate.  Draws never happen online.

OTB, the results are not as extreme but still there.  I took a yearly sample of games in my database and filtered it by rating.  I arbitrarily labelled anyone under 2,000 elo as an amateur and anyone over that as a professional.  Here are the results (click to enlarge):

Simply put, amateurs had a 22.6% draw rate, where professionals had 35.4%. If you are an amateur, your game is naturally more likely to end decisively, which means you naturally have less to fear about forced draws.

But, I can hear you say, what percentage of these games are "regular" draws versus "forced" draws?  I don't have an easy way to tell, so I did the next best thing: I filtered for just Berlin games.  The Berlin is notorious for its draws.  What happened here?

There are 63 draws out of 362 games.  This is actually a LOWER draw rate than overall.  Of those draws, 43 go beyond move 30, 30 beyond move 40, 19 beyond move 50,  and 13 go beyond move 60.  I've very hesitant to say anything that last this long is a "forced" draw, especially in amateur chess.

That said, one third of games ended relatively early: 20 games are under 30 moves, and 8 are below 20.  Those games are really weird.  For example, apparently this pseudo-Marshall is an instant draw :

Or how about this one, where the game apparently ends in a draw ... just as Black is about to win the Queen?

Here's another draw where Black is completely winning:

Here is the closest thing I found to a forced draw:

Do you know what's funny?  Black was actually completely winning in this game, but he settled for a perpetual check against a higher-rated player.  He snatched equality from the jaws of victory.

I'll admit, just glancing through these games, there were some that were dull, and others that were unquestionably equal.  When I run a quick computer check, though, I see lots of errors and chances to claim an advantage.  Even in the most drawish of drawish openings, there were ample chances to play for a win... and indeed, most games did end up having a winner.

And, for the record, I didn't find one infamous "Berlin draw" that plagues grandmaster chess.  Indeed, if you are an amateur chess player, you are more likely to draw a winning position than get a forced draw.

My Games Are Naturally Decisive

I'm an amateur chess player.  My results mirror the above.  I have played over 1,500 correspondence games and 3,000 online blitz games.  I can't recall a single forced draw.  Lots of dull games, sure, because you can't physically prevent people from playing the London system, but not a single forced draw.

Two games come close.  First, there was this Open Spanish game on chess.com, shortly before I stopped playing on that site: https://www.chess.com/game/daily/118091540

It's funny, I remember playing this game, but I have no memory of it.  Around this time, I started using opening books during correspondence chess, something I had not done previously.  I ran through about 25 moves of analysis from GM Mikhalevski, soon reached a pretty dull position and promptly liquidated into an endgame.  This was not a forced draw, but it wasn't much of a game: parroting someone else's analysis, and then a drawn endgame shortly after.

The second game is, oddly, a blitz game, following GM Shankland's Sicilian Repertoire: https://lichess.org/iZsu78jA/black#28

Here I'm undoubtedly better, but it's very slight, and Rook endgames are always drawish.  That's basically what happened: I made one tiny slip and immediately reached a 0.00 Rook endgame, which we promptly drew.

These two games stand out.  And I mean that literally: out of 4,500 games, many of which I still remember to this day (generally, not move-by-move), I can only recall two "kinda forced" draws.  This is miniscule.  Both games also involved Black, both extended deep into the endgame and I was slightly better in both at various points.  Am I really going to cry over drawing these games?

No, of course not.

Who Plays These Forced Draws?

Let me end with an observation: Internet forums have lots of people loathing forced draws.  People hate them.  Indeed, I can't recall seeing a single person saying, "I can't wait to play a forced draw in my game!" 

Well, maybe Giri...

Nobody likes forced draws.  Everyone wants to avoid forced draws.  So ... who is out there playing these forced draws?  Anyone?  Or is this like the mythical person that somehow knows all opening theory ... when the vast majority of amateur games leave theory early on anyway?

I'm convinced this is a completely made-up problem.  There are enough things to worry about as an amateur (tactics, strategy, calculation, etc etc) without adding "but what if the game that is objectively drawn ends in a draw?" to the mix.