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Let me be contrarian yet again. David quotes Sam and Greg, who question whether the Great Shatranj game is drawish because it has all shortrange pieces. I argued over 2 years ago that the most drawish of my shatranj games would be Modern Shatranj, because it has the smallest front - 8 squares across - and Great [and Grand and others] would be less drawish, because they have wider fronts and no longrange pieces. I just looked at the game logs for Modern Shatranj, and, of 18 completed games, 6 are draws [okay 5 of them are me, but I did win 4 more]. My prediction is that there are no draws in the other 2 games...
Great Shatranj - 9 games completed, no draws
Grand Shatranj - 9* games completed, 1 draw
Oops. Well, 2 things. One, the 9* is closer to 7, because 2 of my games timed out after a few moves. Two, 1 of 16 or 1 of 18 is considerably less than 6 of 18. I still maintain that more powerful pieces on a narrower front create more draws, specifically because you can clog up that narrow front with a few weak pieces supported by strong longrange pieces. Now, I don't play or follow FIDE chess, but several people onsite have mentioned excessive draws in that game as a problem. Some of it, I gather, is because masters apparently agree to draws beforehand, but why are all those games drawn? What are the tactical and strategic reasons they draw? I will venture to guess it's because weak pieces clog up the middle of the 8x8, supported by the power pieces. It becomes too expensive to break through, then; it's a case of whoever attacks, loses, in those cases, no?