FTA Bonus on Highlevel Games means nearly Autowin

[CombatEX]

At high levels in chess the adjusted win percent for white compared to black is marginal (around 53-55% or so), but a lot of games end up draws. Reaching a draw even in the highest level games of Outwitters is extremely unlikely. Now this next part is partly speculation, but it is possible that much of the FTA in chess is mitigated by the fact that black can cause the game to enter a draw through proper defense and as a result, the adjusted percentages (when draws are factored into w/l) aren't that favored towards white. One should note however that around 30% of high level games are draws and that that is a huge fraction of game results which are thereby not applicable when converting the comparison over to Outwitters. As such, the w/l percentage in chess games isn't an accurate method of comparison when analyzing FTA in Outwitters. In fact w/l statistics often show something around the following:

White ~37%
Black ~ 27%
Draw ~ 30%

You'll notice that without draws, the FTA could range anywhere from 67/27 White/Black to 50/50 White/Black.

So the question is, if draws were impossible in chess would the percentage still be near 50/50? Maybe. But the fact is we don't know simply by looking at this particular statistic and therefore the analogy is ultimately a poor one.

Now this is just a quote from one guy so don't consider it as any kind of argument in itself, but I think this captures the essence of my concerns with the Outwitters/Chess FTA comparison:

"I don't believe that White has a forced win in Chess. I do however believe that with either 1.e4 or 1.d4, White should be able to obtain some sort of advantage that persists into the endgame. If chess were scored like boxing, with drawn games awarded by some point system to the player (if any) who came 'closer' to winning, then I believe White would indeed have a forced win in theory."
-Grandmaster Larry Kaufman

Is he right? Who knows? And that is the point, without draws we don't know how big white's FTA would be.