A draw is essentially a tie.
The most common reason for a draw is a stalemate. This occurs when the person whose turn it is to move has no legal moves to make, but his king is safe.
There are other ways to draw. The main ways are if a game is going nowhere, such as threefold repetition (the pieces in the exact same position on the board three times in one game) and the 50-move rule (50 moves without either a capture or pawn rule).
I attended my first chess tournaments more than 20 years ago as a child. In that time, I have never had reason to draw by mutual agreement in any competitive situation, only in casual games which weren’t time-controlled.
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