Games - BAP System

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	Games - BAP System

The Ballard Anti-draw Point (BAP) system was created in 2005 to reduce the percentage of chess games that end in draws, especially short games between strong players where neither side takes any real risk. In chess, it is customary that if both players agree to a draw, the game is drawn. Even with rules to prevent players from offering/accepting draws, if two players want to draw, they can just trade off all the pieces to a dead even game.

Eliminating the draw from the game of chess would be very impractical, however, with a simple change to the points awarded for win-loss-draw, it is possible to make quick draws illogical.

The old point system awards one point for a win, half a point for a draw and no points for a loss. BAP awards three points for a black win, two points for a white win, one point for a black draw and no points for white draw or any loss. BAP scores will be about double the old system.

The reasoning behind the BAP is that it is commonly known in the chess community that at the master level, drawing as black is considered a minor victory. This means that it is a minor defeat for white. Also, it is significantly harder for black to win as compared to winning with white. While it is not clear if a 50% premium for a black win is too much or too little, if the draw percentage goes to 25% and white wins twice as often as black, BAP would be in perfect balance.

The old system is biased in favor of white progressively more as the playing strength goes up. The white win ratio goes up along with the draw percentage. As players get stronger, fewer and fewer games are decisive and of the decisive games, white wins a higher and higher percentage.

With BAP, the two effects bias in opposite directions. As players get stronger, the draw percentage goes up and this favors black. As the players get stronger, white wins a higher and higher percentage, this favors white. While it is unlikely that both factors are in perfect balance, BAP's primary goal is to eliminate the strong incentives to draw, even if it ends up being biased for or against white, since all players play under the same rules, overall it is fair as long as each player plays an even number of whites and blacks. Once there is data to be able to calculate the actual bias, BAP could be modified to eliminate the need for color balancing as the expected value for each color would be the same. This would be a big improvement over the current system as the current system is biased in favor of white, but there is no requirement to balance the colors played and a lot of tournaments have an odd number of rounds.

There is extensive discussion on BAP at and the first tournament to be held using BAP was the Bainbridge Slugfest.

Due to the color balancing requirement, every other round players in a swiss can only play against half the players. This adds the number of rounds needed to produce a clear winner. Usage of accelerated pairings or McMahon swiss is recommended to counteract this effect.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for BAP System ]

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