[2] Under FIDE rules, a draw should be offered after making the move and before pressing the clock, then marked in the scoresheet as (=).
", or similar; the French word remis (literally "reset") is internationally understood as a draw offer and may be used if the players do not share a common language.
This rule is applied with the arbiter's discretion; for example, a player loudly offering a draw while the opponent is thinking may well suffer a time penalty or even forfeit the game, but it is unlikely that a player would be penalized for offering a draw in a lifeless position when it is not their turn to move.
[5] At one time, chess players considered it bad manners to play out a superior but theoretically drawn endgame.
[6] There are certain behavioural norms relating to draw offers not codified in the FIDE Laws of Chess but widely observed.
Such repeated offers of a draw have also sometimes been considered distracting enough to warrant the arbiter taking action under article 11.5.
It is considered bad etiquette to offer a draw in a clearly lost position[7][8] or even when one has no winning chances but one's opponent does.
Mastichiadis, a minor master, was so happy to get half a point against his illustrious opponent that he did not pause to examine the position before accepting the offer.
The rule about the procedure of offering a draw was violated in a 1981 game between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov.
Boris Spassky wrote: The present game once again demonstrates how grandmasters play when they do not care to win.
[20] In the 1958 game[21] between Yuri Averbakh and Bobby Fischer, the players agreed to a draw in an unclear position where White is a piece ahead.
"[22] Averbakh stated that Fischer offered the draw and that each player had only about ten minutes to make the 19 or 20 moves before time control.
Several short draws occurred in the World Chess Championship 1984 between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov.
[23] Kasparov explains Draw agreed on Black's proposal: with the resulting complete symmetry, the fighting resources are practically exhausted.
[24] In 1962 a Candidates Tournament was held in Curaçao to determine the challenger to Mikhail Botvinnik in the 1963 World Championship.
There is good evidence that Soviet players Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, and Efim Geller arranged to draw all of the games between themselves.
[26] Bobby Fischer charged that Petrosian accepted a draw when he was winning and Jan Timman agrees.
In the 1967 USSR Championship, Lev Polugaevsky and Mikhail Tal were leading with the same number of points going into the next-to-last round.
Kasparov had this to say about one of the games of his 1984 match against Vasily Smyslov: "It all ended in a 'planned' draw, and I was not exactly delighted with such a pre-programmed result.
Because "grandmaster draws" are widely considered unsatisfactory both for spectators (who may only see half-an-hour of play with nothing very interesting happening) and sponsors (who suffer from decreased interest in the media), various measures have been adopted over the years to discourage players from agreeing to draws.
Also known as the "Sofia-Corsica Rules", the anti-draw measure was adopted in the Bilbao Final Masters[35] and the FIDE Grand Prix 2008–2010 (part of the qualifying cycle for the World Chess Championship 2012) did not allow players to offer a draw.
In 1954 FIDE rejected a request to reinstate the rule, but it did state that it is unethical and unsportsmanlike to agree to a draw before a serious contest had begun.
In 1962 FIDE reinstated a version of the rule against draws by agreement in fewer than thirty moves, with the director allowing them in exceptional circumstances.
Proposed cure for severe acute "drawitis" by FIDE officials Eliminates draws completely by forcing a fast time control game to be played after an accepted draw proposal to ensure there is always a winner and a loser.
It was adopted by FIFA for football matches in 1994, after many leagues around the world had used it successfully to reduce the number of stalling draws.
GM Larry Kaufman points out that the reason for the high draw rate is not one of incentives, but rather the nature of chess as a game: White has a first-move advantage, but it is not enough to win by force.
[46] Ballard explained the purpose of the BAP System: "The usual flurry of last round draws in almost all tournaments makes chess unmarketable on TV.
Kaufman and Arno Nickel have suggested that stalemate and bare king should both be scored as ¾ to the superior side, and that a player who brings about threefold repetition should only be awarded ¼ of a point, citing engine statistics to argue that this would be sufficient to solve the draw death problem (in the trial games simulating human World Championship level, the draw rate was decreased by these rule changes from 65.6% to 22.6%).
[43] In the previously mentioned 2003 Generation Chess International Tournament, players agreeing to premature draws were to be fined 10% of their appearance fee and 10% of any prize money won.
In 2005, GM John Nunn wrote that he believed the rules did not need to change, and that the simple solution was for organizers to not invite players known for taking short draws.