r/whatif•
maxram1

What if some chess draws are ruled as wins for Black to get more balanced winrates?

Other

Just a weird what-if I was suddenly thinking about lol.

I was following the discourse about the stalemate rule, where one argument sometimes is mentioned that no-stalemate will make White winrate higher as they have more winning options they can initiate. Hence, while more draws will be avoided, the game will be less balanced.

So I was curious actually, what are some chess draws (probably not stalemate) that, if ruled as wins for Black (no matter who initiate the draws), will make the winrates closer to 50-50 for White? So it's an attempt to not only reduce draws, but also equalize the winrates.

I'm curious so I asked an AI which gives both 3-fold repetition and perpetual check as the draws to be ruled as Black wins to equalize the winrates in master level based on historical stats.

Of course I'm not sure if that's true as they always make mistakes lol but what do y'all think of this what-if? And what are those types of draws?

I guess it has some similarities with Komi in Go, where empirical data can help balance a game.

Posted Jul 10, 2026, 7:25 PM UTC

11
Loading comments…