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Comment by discardable_dan | Hacker News Reader

I can't tell if this is satire. Draws by insufficient material almost never occur in Grandmaster chess. I have not seen a single grandmaster game end this way in a year of watching top-level chess games daily. If you inspect all of the dozens of draws in this world's Tata Steel, which included ~300 GM-level games, you won't find a single that ends this way.

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>If you inspect all of the dozens of draws in this world's Tata Steel, which included ~300 GM-level games, you won't find a single that ends this way.

Here's one: https://www.chess.com/events/2022-tata-steel-chess-tournamen...

Draws by insufficient material are quite common, but I wouldn't call them the bane of modern chess, or anything close to that.

Well, GMs agree on a draw well before it actually gets down to insufficient material. Many draws-by-agreement would degenerate into that if they kept playing.

Well yeah, they usually do that, but draws by insufficient material still happen pretty frequently. Also, king vs. king is not the only way it can end; you'll see king vs. king and knight (or bishop) pop up pretty often too.

In addition to what my sibling comment says-- there's a whole lot of draws by agreement because the position is one that everyone knows becomes draws by insufficient material.

While this is slightly nitpicky, from what I gather many of those draws are because neither side can make progress against the opponent. These are positions where in order for the game to move "forward" both sides would need to individually choose to weaken their position, leaving them playing non-moves until triggering threefold repetition or agreeing to a draw.

> These are positions where in order for the game to move "forward" both sides would need to individually choose to weaken their position, leaving them playing non-moves until triggering threefold repetition or agreeing to a draw.

Sure, but there's also a whole lot of draws where insufficient material is inevitable. E.g. pawn vs nothing, where the king cannot reach the pawn to defend.

And there's also draws where the only move "forward" doesn't weaken the position, but lead towards an end of insufficient material. E.g. most situations pawn vs. bishop.

Because they are ending the game before it gets to that stage. Similar to seeing check mates 3, 4, 5 moves in advance, they can see with perfect play that the reduction in pieces will end in an end game with insufficient material.

Exactly. I find it hard to see it myself, but I often play out games like that with an engine and very often the pieces just peter out to a draw.

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