Draw offers good
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, I am Grandmaster Noel Studer and you are listening to Next Level Chess Podcast. On this podcast you'll get grandmaster advice that is actionable and that helps you break through your chess plateaus and improve your chess game and then also your chess rating. Points. If you want to get more of that grandmaster chess advice, make sure to check out all the links in the description.

You can find links to my free newsletter, to my free long 60 page ebook. You can find links to all of my courses. Make sure to check that out. If you like that podcast. Now let's get into today's topic, which is a very, very important one. It is draw offers and why I have such a big hate for draw offers.

Now let's leave aside the reasons why draw offers are bad for chess as a sport. Why we have less chances to get into the Olympics and [00:01:00] let's just focus. on why draw offers are bad for you as a improving chess player. If you want to get better at chess, offering a draw is basically the worst thing you can do during a game.

Why? Because it's the fastest way to lose the possibility to learn. You rate the result, the draw finally the game is over, higher than the process and the learning because once the game is finished, you won't learn anymore, right? So by offering premature draws or taking premature draw offers, you will cut short your game and each game should be seen as a learning opportunity.

You make a mistake if you want to improve more in offering a draw. And a draw offer usually happens in one of two situations. Situation number one, you're better against a stronger opponent. So if you offer draw, you don't trust yourself enough to actually beat that opponent, [00:02:00] because a stronger opponent will only take your draw offer if they see that they are actually much worse, which is a very, very bad situation.

How are you going to beat your stronger opponents if you just. Offer them a draw when, when you're better. Doesn't, doesn't make sense to me. The second point is that you are worse or lost against a weaker opponent and hope to get a shortcut. Now this second option can be useful. Sometimes let's say you're completely lost and you just Don't think there's anything more to learn or to save this game.

So you can offer a draw. And if your opponent is a chicken, they will take that draw offer. But in general, I advertise for playing chess as if there wouldn't be a draw offer, and it's just a very, very simple process. And just to summarize pros and cons of draw offers. The pros is if your opponent accepts, you do not lose the game.

And that's [00:03:00] really the only pro, honestly. There is nothing more positive to be said about draw offers that the cons instead are quite big and important. In my opinion you're showing weakness. to your opponent and to yourself. So you're showing yourself. You don't trust yourself in this position and you're showing your opponent this as well.

So if they don't agree to the draw offer, they might even get more motivated. Let's say you're a better player and you offer a draw. Basically what you're telling your weaker opponent is that, hey, I agree that I'm much worse and I hope that you take the draw because you're so much better. So if they are smart, they are saying, oh, you know what?

That's cool. Also, they agree. Now, I wasn't wrong that I'm much better. I'm actually much better, right? So that's not great. Point number two that is bad, is a con, is you lose out on a learning opportunity. That's shit. Every game you play is a learning opportunity. Now you just cut it short. Not great. And then con number three, and this is something many [00:04:00] people forget to take into consideration is that when you, you know, get, you know, a habit of offering draws, you start to think about during the game, if you should actually offer a draw or not, and when is the right moment and if it is right or not, and so on.

So you just waste a lot of thinking about maybe offering a draw. When you should just think about the next best chess move and just move and see where the game leads to. And I have a great story to that point. One time I had only to make a draw in a Swiss championship to win the championship. I was ahead by one point.

If my opponent won against me, then we would have to play a tie break. And Marcus Rager, my coach at the this tournament, he told me that, It might be smart to offer a draw at some point. If I start thinking about it, I might just have to offer the [00:05:00] draw just to get it out of my system. Now, I understand that my opponent later on was a little bit upset about that.

So that maybe wasn't, you know, the most nice or a sportive thing to do, which I didn't take into consideration back then, but from a practical point of view for myself, it was right to offer the draw pretty early on. So I surprised him in the opening. I thought I was slightly better actually. And I had 40 minutes more on the clock.

So I would just offer a draw early on. And he didn't even respond. And I can understand it because basically he's giving up his hopes of the title. But the idea was really to avoid thinking about every single move. That you know, I play thinking about if it's the right moment to offer a draw, yes or no.

I think what Marcus went and thought back then was if I would be much better, I could offer a draw. And I just used it like this, but it released that stress. It would have been smarter to just say, Hey, I don't think about offering a draw. If he wants to draw, he will offer me a draw. He knows that I will [00:06:00] always accept, basically always accept the draw.

So that's just a small story of how, you know, getting this out of your system, but it's better to not bother the opponent, not do something that is maybe seen as rude or whatever my opponent was getting upset about. So you just don't think about draw. And I have a very funny story about one of my students.

So I had a student that I took him. I think he was six or seven years old and he learned, basically learned to chess rules from me. And I was in his private coach coaching the club. And I would train him and he was getting very strong and he played very aggressive, interesting chess, but there was one problem.

Whenever the student had a good position against a strong opponent, he would just offer a draw. It was probably something connected to, you know, pressure and just all the tension building up, and he would just be happy to make a draw and then go home. And so I wanted to stop that. [00:07:00] And I told him, you won't improve your game if you always offer draws, but nothing really worked.

So at some point I just said, okay, now just no draws anymore. There's just a clear rule, like no exceptions, whatever. You just never are allowed to say yes to a draw offer and you're never allowed to verbalize a draw offer. If there is a three, threefold repetition, that's okay. There's not enough material on the board anymore.

That's okay. These are clear draws according to the rules, but you're not allowed to use the draw offer, be it using yourself or saying yes to it. And then I went to visit one of his tournaments and he was actually it was the last round and he needed to win this game to win the whole tournament. His opponent, on the other hand, just needed a draw to win the whole tournament.

That was clear. And with a draw, my student would also be on making a medal for this tournament, which was very cool. He was 11 at the time. [00:08:00] And in this moment, the, he took a lot of risks and his opponent completely outplayed him and had a mating attack. There was checkmate in. Four or five moves. Can't remember exactly.

And this opponent was so kind that he said, okay, to himself, there's no difference in winning or drawing any way he wins the tournament. So he just offered a draw to my student and my student, I was standing right behind him. My student turned around, pointed on me, Told his opponent. I am not allowed to take a draw Moved his king and got checkmated three moves later So talk about somebody listening to his coach now in this exact situation Taking a draw for his okay But I was very, very proud and happy of that student that he understood the lesson of well, you shouldn't [00:09:00] take draws in basically all situations.

Now as a kid, it might be harder to realize, okay this is maybe the situation where, which my coach didn't think about. So I can take a draw. As an adult, you guys will be able to do that. But in general, I highly, highly recommend that you start from now on, especially if you have the habit of offering draws, making draws, be it online over the board, wherever you play chess.

Just stop offering draws and when your opponent Offers a draw you just nicely decline and if you think it's rude because the position is so drawish then you can always after the game tell them. Hey, I just have a rule for myself I want to play as much as possible. I don't take draws. It wasn't meant to be rude I didn't think I can beat you in that position, but I just have that rule for myself.

So you can always explain yourself. And this will be just way, way simpler to [00:10:00] play chess this way. You won't have to think about draw offers. You won't make early draws and you will learn much more from your games. And that's really it. Once you have this clear rule, do that rule for half a year, maybe a year, you know, get really used to it.

And then if you want to, if you think there are extremely smart moments where you could maybe use a draw offer, or maybe once you feel extremely sick and so on, then you can start it. You know taking draw offers slowly a little bit in big exceptions again But in general just play without them and you'll be better off Okay, guys I hope this episode helped you stop these draw offers and if you have some chicken friends who are always offering draws left and right and never beat high rated opponents because They just you know poop in their [00:11:00] pants because they are so scared of winning then please subscribe Send them this podcast episode.

Let's stop this chicken chess. Let's start playing real chess Let's just you know, enjoy the game play it out and see what happens. See you in the next episode