The most elegantly beautiful option, in my opinion, is to just have the auto draw kick in right from the opening move of the game. If at any point 200 moves (100 per each player) occurs without a capture for either player, the game will end in an auto draw. Yes, a move counter would be important. But since I am asking for this counter to record moves right from the beginning and for it to get reset with every capture, it would be annoying, I think, to have it appear prior to, say, 100 total moves have been played. At that point the counter appears in an out of the way place on the screen in a modest but not garish size. Perhaps, like the current move timer does when it reaches 5 seconds, it could turn red in the final 50 total moves between the two players, and even flash in the final 10. This 200 move number could be tweaked if need be after testing.
Totally nonsense. Games that are naturally born to take a long time occur when neither side has a distinct advantage, yet one side realizes the other player has set up defenses to counter his proposed attack, so he must regroup to another area and instill deception at the same time. In doing this reversal attack, or brainwashing attempt at making the opponent think a counter is occurring elsewhere can take many dozens of moves with or without taking a piece or more than a couple of scouts or lutenants. This reassembling cannot be penalized with some non-sensical built in move counter. The number of moves in and of itself does not dictate the length of a game. It is not the length of games you are trying to change, you are trying to allow draws to occur that are natural draws. It is only for that unique but rare time when one opponent is being immature. 200 consecutive moves without a piece being taken nor revealed, is certainly a good enough concept to add if for some reason no one likes to put in good old fashioned ISF timers, proven and accepted worldwide. Good day.
I see a lot of people balking at the idea of the 200 as potentially being too long and would only serve to drag out a game. To those people I say that the auto draw proposal is designed to stop the worst of offenders first--those persons who will play for hours in a pointless game and the other player just gives up to escape. It is not meant to address every possible situation imaginable. If you want it to somehow act differently when no miners are present, or to be a maximum of 20 minutes in its action, then you'll have to settle for less than you would like with this rule. But if you're tired of playing games that go on nightmarishly long due to the worst of opponents, then this could help you.
The move timer could be accelerated after the first 45 minutes (in real time) of a game, then the 15 second timer could become 5 seconds, and the personal timer would wind down to zero if a player was attempting to milk the 200 move stall.
I would toss out for consideration that with an auto draw in place we might just see bad behavior players stop trying to "wait out" their opponents because everyone would know the auto draw is coming.
The autodraw has to be setup so that people who take forever to put their best strategy in place get burned for taking too long. This happens a lot when one player has taken one other players general but still does not know the spy or marshall, As the weaker opponent spins for swaps to keep the advantage at one piece, the player with the general still, is being so extra careful to keep his advantage that he spends a lot of needless time probing for rank of pieces that he forgets to go get the flag. His timer is running down (move count) and he should and righltly so get burned for it in the form of a draw.
Back in the day it was often put that we should couple the auto draw with a chasing rule so that the two would work complimentarily to one another. It was a good thought. But we didn't get that. When we got the HmmNess chasing rule we did not pass the auto draw with it. Now we have a discussion going for getting double chasing stopped. This, too, could be combined with the auto draw, and it would be appropriate, although not essential, to once again try to do both rules simultaneously. The Prof has brought this up in this thread again.
The double chase rule is coming regardless of creating an autodraw. Mark my words.
Napoleon 1 er has mentioned a couple of times in different places that we should have an agreement as to whether both players want an auto draw. This really misses the point of the rule in question because the auto draw is for precisely the situation where people are NOT TALKING. If both players are civil then they shouldn't have a problem with this auto draw proposal, as it is one that ends the game after a fairly long time... and players are ALWAYS able to end their game sooner if they so agree.
Yes the autodraw is good for the losing player and bad for the winning player, but howyou define winning is different if you have all the power and no miners, perhaps you are the one who wants the draw, but the other player refused and rightly so. It is his responsibility to move the game forward and start working his swaps and miners to get going to the flag, then if he fails and he is now at a disadvantage the table turns and the other player now does not want the draw. So lets be prudent about autodraws. Sometimes they are coming no matter what but sometimes the tides can turn. In any case an autodraw does not have to be agreed upon by both side. HOWEVER I THINK YOU CAN ADD AN OPTION IF BOTH PLAYERS AGREE BEFORE THE GAME STARTS TO REMOVE AUTODRAW. Then neither player can whine to these busy monitors.
Finally, maribo has talked about getting a total time game clock going, because the time of 200 moves is so variable. Perhaps this kind of rule could be added later but it would be nice to see auto draw in action by itself, or maybe in tandem with the double chasing rule, for awhile first.
Yea whatever. I once got burned by the player who tried to keep the game going forever because he had a general and no miners and I had 2 majors left and he could not trap any of my other pieces because he had no sisters to help his general but he would not draw and sure I benefited later from the 20 points, but I really just wanted to go eat lunch.I could give a crap about these ratings, but I do like to win, They are kind of separate issues.
The arbritrainess of the move counter to me, could be resolved, to me is if that 200 move counter does not even kick in until 30 minutes of real time has passed, then it looks for a sequence of 100 moves per side when nothing happens, and the personal timer starts ticking faster after the first 30 minutes to 10 seconds per move not 15.. Can you imagine that time, a real arshole would have to take 1000 seconds (only 15 minutes Gary, of stalling during his 100 move stall)