This happens in most sports. For example, a baseball team will not use its best pitcher in every single game. Sufficient rest is vital to long term success.

Of course there are situations where this doesn't apply. If the outcome is doubtful at the very end of a contest, a participant must give of their best.

This is not to say that some chess players--and, for that matter, other athletes--don't take this to extremes, constantly taking short draws not in attempt to maximize their result, but simply to collect a paycheck. Those players need to be put out to pasture, and a simple method is not to invite them to tournaments. But a player who takes the occasional draw to rest is not to be condemned if he gives full strength most of the time.

Look at Tal's later years, full of short draws. Do you begrudge any of those to him?

And, yes, I know you're going to bring up Fischer always giving 100%. Need I remind you what happened to his chess career, and to him? Was winning the World Championship really worth the 35 years of hell that followed?

No, I begrudge lenient organizers and complacent fans.

But this stuff about "short draws" is a red herring. It's not the shortness of the game (I have nothing against Adorjan vs Karpov, 1967, for example), or even the drawn result, but rather the premature cancellation of the game, in media res, by mutual agreement, that is rather obscene. No one else in any other sport does this.

Draw agreements came about historically because people were reaching dead drawn positions, and needed a way to end the game without playing on forever in futility. But for such dead drawn positions we wouldn't have a rule allowing players to agree to a draw (do they have such a rule in Othello or Scrabble?). Draw agreements were never intended to preserve the mental health of top players, or give them a rest day, or protect their standing in the tournament, or allow them to avoid having to defeat their best friend or their countryman, etc.