Offering draw on move 10 is the GTO tournament strategy

[koedem]

First the scenario, why offering quick draws is the correct way to play tournaments:
From a discussion I had on the lichess discord: The marathon ended as it often does with quite a few people offering draws on move 10 every game. Upon thinking about that I realized that doing that from the start in most time controls is the optimal tournament strategy. Consider the marathon tournament: https://lichess.org/tournament/spring20
The second place finisher I think played through most of the event, that is 1440 minutes. Making it to move 10 at the high levels probably takes less than 30 seconds, offering and agreeing to a draw and getting a new game holds that overall time for a quick draw to less than a minute. If you get in one quick draw every minute you would end up with 1440 points, doubling the score of the winner.

And this is in a bullet tournament where the non quick draw games end rather quickly. In blitz or even rapid things will be more extreme as reaching move 10 will hardly take more time at the top levels, when you still bang out theory but the number of points the other players will score is even lower so you need to be even less successful with it for it to be worth it.
I think the main reason this hasn't happened much yet is a) not enough people figured it out and b) people of course play for fun not to make draws to win a virtual trophy. But in a prize money tournament things can be different, see e.g. here: https://lichess.org/tournament/EQBV5eLT

Some more points on why this strategy is so good: If you always get the draw you can accumulate a lot of points very fast as seen above. The only way to "counter" this strategy is for the opponent to decline the draw despite it also being optimal for them. However in that case the draw offerer did not lose anything, they now play a normal game just like all the other players. Except that in some amount of the games they will get the quick point and can start another game quickly. The only consideration is if you would do this while on a win streak. This probably depends on the time control and tournament situation, there may be merit to play until you lose the streak. (though you do also get an extra point for the quick draw there so if you're not super likely to keep the streak that may still be worth it) But if you just lost the last game, offering the draw is always the best option.

The following part is just my personal opinion:
Now the question that arises is, should something be done about this? I think this is not what we want to be the optimal strategy. And the money tournament linked above shows that this definitely can happen in practice too and might become more common as more people realize this and more money tournaments are played on lichess. There are some ways to tackle this problem: The simplest is to increase the number of moves needed for draws to score a point, from 10 to maybe 20 or maybe even 30. It may be a good idea to have this only affect agreed upon draws and still give points for repetitions and similar, or even just disallow such early draw offers though that would probably be more complex to code, while increasing the move count is probably (?) just changing a constant.
If you allow repetitions it could happen that people start playing opening lines where forced repetitions are possible but I think that would be more difficult than right now when you can just press the draw button and hope. (part of the strength of the strategy now is that if they decline you just play a normal game, if you play a weird drawn opening line and they play on you may end up in an unfamiliar position, so there is a cost to it)

Another even more drastic option would be to have something like draw streaks, where if you draw multiple games in a row you don't get any more points until you win one, although that is of course a much harsher change and likely to be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

[koedem]

@ornicar I am a bit worried about the implications of this change: If a second draw in a row gives no points then after a draw it is better to lose than to draw another. (so you get rid of your draw streak)
That's why my suggestion was to only break streaks by winning. Not sure this is a huge deal just wanted to point out the potential problem.

[niklasf]

Loss > draw sounds broken to me.

[koedem]

To be fair with a draw rate of 10% the chance for two draws in a row is only 1% so probably less than 1% of games would be affected in practice.

[DVRazor]

The draw strategy has indeed gotten widespread

https://lichess.org/tournament/ZaQ8S7GT

[tmmlaarhoven]

To me it now sounds rather arbitrary to reward people who won their previous game(s) and made a quick draw to gain even more points, and to punish people who just lost or drew their previous games, and who also want to make a quick draw to gain more points. Why is the former better than the latter? And I would guess the optimal strategy with this new rule, when staying in the top, would turn into (1) play until you win a game, and (2) then make a quick draw. Which theoretically does not solve the issue.

On top of this, there might be issues with people not watching move counters; either people who don't pay attention to it, or people who e.g. play in Zen mode and cannot even tell if they reached move 40. Are you going to punish people who think they made it to move 40 when they didn't, when perhaps they actually legitimately reached a clearly drawn position? (Say opposite color bishop ending.)

The current solution seems to become rather complicated, when a simple FIDE rule could be used instead: disable the ability to offer a draw before move 40. Then there's no confusion on the players' ends that a draw offer does not grant any points before move 40, and this is a much easier rule to explain to seasoned chess players - it's simply the Sofia rule. Then there's also no distinction between draws after wins/draws/losses, and people do not have to pay attention to the move counter themselves before offering draws.

[ddugovic]

There are still reasons a player may need (or want) to offer a draw. But perhaps cleaner could be to pause, kick, or ban a player who is on a drawing streak.

[tmmlaarhoven]

One of the arguments for the Sofia rule which I think is quite convincing is: in which other sport do you see that, halfway through a game, the players agree to a draw? Say with Chelsea playing Manchester United and at half-time they decide to call it a day? Or with Federer playing Nadal, and at 3-3 saying "let's just get to the tiebreaks, clearly we will keep our service games anyway"? Games may end drawn in many sports, but agreeing to it does not exist anywhere as far as I know.

And when do you ever "need" to offer a draw? You should not have started a game if you did not have time to play, and otherwise I do not see reasons why you necessarily need to have that option.

[ddugovic]

I need to offer a draw if I have perpetual check and I'm down a queen, and I get an emergency phone call.

[tmmlaarhoven]

If you get an emergency phone call I'd say you have bigger things to worry about than losing a game :) And if your opponent agrees that you deserve a draw, he can repeat moves and you get the draw, so I don't see the issue with that. (And if he does not agree you deserve a draw, then the ability to offer a draw would not make a difference.)

[ddugovic]

OK, another use case is: I need to offer a draw if I have perpetual check and I'm down a queen, and I have better things to do than repeat moves for the next 30-ish turns.

[tmmlaarhoven]

Again, threefold repetition would still be a draw, and if your opponent agrees it's a draw you will get that repetition well before 30+ moves. So again the only scenario that applies to your use case is if your opponent tries to win, in which case, again, offering a draw does not change anything.

[michael1241]

Suggest reducing cutoff for short games to 30 moves instead of 40.
Also a long draw should stop the draw streak too (if not already implemented, I can't tell from the code sorry).