Do Arbiters Know The Rules Of Chess?

[Bill Porter]

The board can't know when the player has made his move because it can't know when the player's hand leaves the piece.

This at least is fairly simple with modern electronics. Each square checks for weight of a piece with say 2mg tolerance and the move is completed when weight fluctuation (from involuntary hand movement) of the piece being held falls to a very low value eg < 0.1mg.
Temporary restoration of the piece to its original square could be taken care of with software.

[Roger de Coverly]

Temporary restoration of the piece to its original square could be taken care of with software.

I'm not aware that the DGT Boards have any difficulty eventually recording a move when the piece is first returned to the original square.

There are posters here who make a distinction between made and completed. What Stewart is suggesting is that the DGT board auto completes when the move is made. On line programs have been doing that for twenty years or more. You would still need a clock or a display of time remaining for the benefit of the players.

[Mike Gunn]

The problem that I have observed with the use of the move counter is that if black isn't present at the start of the game then about 1 in 4 whites make their move and start black's clock (without having started theirs first). When they have made 40 moves they relax and are soon flagged by the clock which thiinks they have made just 39. (The 1 in 4 is based on what I counted one year at the Surrey Congress, the number of boards where black hadn't arrived, white's first move had been made and white's clock showed 2.00 rather than 1.59 - no increments in use.)

[Roger de Coverly]

When they have made 40 moves they relax and are soon flagged by the clock which thiinks they have made just 39.

If you aren't using increments, the clock will flag anyway when it reaches zero because it isn't told the move rate, only the first and second periods.

If you are using increments and the counter is on, you expect the additional time to be added once you play your fortieth move. If it isn't added, then either your score sheet or the clock are faulty. It used to be a popular British move rate to play 40 moves in 80 minutes with a one minute increment and then add either 20 or 40 minutes for the rest of the game. I found it necessary to complain about a faulty clock once where it only added 20 minutes at move 40. Had the additional time been added at some later random point in the game, I'm not sure I would have noticed, other than my precautionary principle of writing clock times down during games where the clock will be incorrect at some point.

[Stewart Reuben]

Actualy, with modern technology it probably could. The scenario you give is not a problem, 1 Qd1-d4 and return it to d1. Much more problematic is Qd1-d4, now letting go of the piece, then putting it on d2. It took time to educate players to use only one hand when moving the piece and pressing the clock. Possibly they could be taught not to pick up a piece, firmly place it on a square and then move it elesewhere. Possibly there could be a time delay of two seconds.
When one plays on the internet, Qd4 is not completed until you 'let go of the piece'. Why not use a computer to play on live?