By giving white an extra half point, they would win games that would otherwise be tied, giving every* game a clear winner.
offset black's first move advantage
I don' have a go comment from the 1920s or now but I think chess should flip the script and turn the board around so black goes first and white first move advantage disappears.
is there an advantage to the rating system to cutting or not cutting ties? would it make it easier to match evenly skilled players if ties were allowed?
Cutting ties does help with matching in tournaments because otherwise you might have to have rematches, and each game takes a long time. You don't want to have a situation where table 1 is waiting on table 2 to play a whole extra round to find out who they'll be up against, or where you end up having to extend the event an extra day because the final match was a tie.
yeah i like the game well enough but not having to deal with rematches is a pretty strong argument in favor
