Ethical considerations may make a draw uncustomary in situations where at least one player has a reasonable chance of winning.
In the 19th century, some tournaments, notably London 1883, required that drawn games be replayed; however, this was found to cause organizational problems due to the backlog.
The offer of a draw should be recorded by each player in their score sheet using the symbol (=) as per Appendix C.12 of FIDE Laws of Chess.
In early tournaments, draws were often replayed until one of the players won; however, this was found to be impractical and caused organizational difficulties.
Article 5 of the 2018 FIDE Laws of Chess gives the basic ways a game may end in a draw; more complicated ways are detailed in Article 9:[3] There is no longer a rule defining perpetual check—a situation in which one player gives a series of checks from which the other player cannot escape—as a draw.
[5] Although these are the laws as laid down by FIDE and, as such, are used at almost all top-level tournaments, at lower levels different rules may operate, particularly with regard to rapid play finish provisions.
Based on tests in correspondence and engine play, GM Larry Kaufman (one of the original authors of Komodo) and correspondence chess grandmaster Arno Nickel have suggested an extension of Lasker's proposal, which would score stalemate, king and minor piece versus king with the superior side to move (similar to the old bare king rule), and threefold repetition as ¾–¼ rather than draws – for threefold repetition, this means penalising the player who brought about a repetition with ¼ of a point, which is similar to how repetitions are sometimes forbidden in xiangqi, shogi, and Go.
[18] (Lasker's original proposal was only for stalemate and bare king; it was supported by Richard Réti and considered not harmful – though unnecessary – by Max Euwe.
)[23] Engine tests by Kaufman using Komodo suggest that at over-the-board human World Championship level, this would lower the draw rate from 65.6% to just 22.6%.
Thus Kaufman calls this solution "terrible", going against "the very nature of the game": he writes that "The inferior side should be trying to draw, and to penalize Black for obtaining a good result is crazy.
It makes chess like a game of 'chicken'; who will 'blink' first and play an unsound move to avoid the mutually bad result of a draw?