Drop a piece lose the game

[Jesper Norgaard]

I don't see why. My argument is made on the basis that the penalties for illegal moves are primarily predicated on the disorientation affect on an opponent. Such disorientation is significantly more acute when one is very short of time, such that a standard 2min time penalty is not really sufficient compensation. There is the added potential issue that it sometime may not be immediately obvious to one short of time that an illegal move has been made. So it is consistent for the penalty to be more draconian on the instigator of the illegal move should one's opponent be short of time.

I think your position seems to rest on the idea that one might make a (deliberate) illegal move as a bit of sharp practice to buy time whilst the claim is investigated. I don't really think this makes much sense, the gains from such sharp practice would be minimal and anyway i don't believe that penalty clauses within the laws are generally framed on this basis (if they did then they would be more likely to be written to penalise offenders with time deductions, rather than offering compensatory time bonuses to opponenets).

The penalties currently in place, giving extra time to the aggrieved player, not deducting time from the offender, seems odd to me if you want penalties to help the schedule of the games and the timely completion of the tournament.

I see the time reduction of 50% of the offenders available fixed time as an offer of an alternative to loss at the first illegal move. It will lead to fewer instant losses for sure, especially in Rapid and Blitz games. The time paid should compensate that the arbiter needs to intervene, the clocks stopped and adjusted to apply the time penalty, and that the opponent has been distracted. The offenders ability to manage time pressure is then reduced by 50% of what he had. But he retains life, he can still participate in the game, even win it. It is less Draconian than the instant loss we now offer. If we give extra time to the aggrieved player, that will tend to delay the schedule, and I think should not be automatic, but only given if the arbiter can see that the aggrieved player has truely been disoriented by the interruption of the game. The arbiter should give compensation time depending on this, and only if necessary.

It is also remarkable that this problem of illegal moves is only present in OTB games, while in online games it doesn't exist because the interface doesn't allow illegal moves to be made. If less players receive a loss from an illegal move, less players will be discouraged to play OTB games instead of online games. I think it is a win-win situation.

[NickFaulks]

It is also remarkable that this problem of illegal moves is only present in OTB games, while in online games it doesn't exist because the interface doesn't allow illegal moves to be made.

It is of course quite possible for face-to-face games to be played using an electronic board and a mouse. That would certainly eliminate the problem of pieces being knocked over, which is how this thread started. It might well be the way the game is heading in the longer term, whether we like it or not.

[Stewart Reuben]

Alex Holowczak >The reason that Rapidplay became a loss after an illegal move, is because with three illegal moves losing, it was apparently relatively common in a time scramble at the end of the game for players to do things like a3-a4.5, then soon after, a4.5-a6.

Incorrect. The motive was to make the rules for all 3 types of otb chess the same in due course.
Thus a player now loses if he makes two illegal moves in a standardplay game instead of three.
Blitz it has always been one illegal move loses.
The 'mistake' we made was for rapidplay to become the same as blitz and to lose after just one illegal move. As Alex correctly says, many people now think the loss in rapidplay should come after two illegal moves. Thus it is likely rapidplay and standardplay will become aligned.

About pieces falling over. The rule in the Mind sports games in Beijing in 2008 was that, if the piece fell over after the clock was pressed, it was a loss. This happened many times in that event. I saw Jovanka Houska make her move putting her queen on a square. She then pressed her clock and the queen fell over in slow motion. Ignatius Leong was the Chief Arbiter. I asked him whether the pieces were of a somewhat different design. He said they were as normal, but I had my doubts. I think the centre of gravity may have been higher.

For many years the penalty for an incorrect claim of 3 fold repetition was a deduction of 5 minutes from the thinking time of the incorrect claimant. This was applied even if it meant a loss on time. Well, such a claim is very disruptive, but it was an anathema for me. The current law of the opponent getting an extra 2 minutes has gone too far the other way. It has the advantage though that it can be applied in several different situations.
As far as I know, the idea of a player losing half his remaining time has never been suggested. This would be an easier law to apply when using an electronic clock.

[Alex Holowczak]

Alex Holowczak >The reason that Rapidplay became a loss after an illegal move, is because with three illegal moves losing, it was apparently relatively common in a time scramble at the end of the game for players to do things like a3-a4.5, then soon after, a4.5-a6.

Incorrect.

[...]

The 'mistake' we made was for rapidplay to become the same as blitz and to lose after just one illegal move.

It isn't incorrect, because I explicitly asked the question, and this was the answer I was given. This exact example was quoted back to me. It was felt that in the situation described above, this was more likely to happen in a situation with limited time or a small increment (e.g. 2, 5 or 10 seconds), because the opponent would be less likely to notice than in a standardplay game with typically a 30-second increment. So it was felt the end of a Rapidplay game was more like a Blitz game than a Standardplay game, hence the desire to unite the two in this regard.

I think this may have tied in with the drive to make a Rapidplay have the same Laws as a Blitz (or maybe that came after this suggestion), but at least one member of the Commission did have reasons for this part explicitly being the same as Blitz.

So I think we're both right, actually!

[Chris Rice]

Sagar Shah has composed an excellent article for ChessBase India on this incident a couple of days ago and it contains another video of a game between Baskaran-Narayanan where the exact same thing happened on the exact same day! (8.41 of the 9 minute clip). There is also a clip from the Topalov incident where he fails to queen the pawn and Nakamura claims and the Aronian-Kramnik game where there was chaos at the end and both players were clearly upset. http://chessbase.in/news/piece-drop-inc ... -mcl-2016/

Initially I was of the opinion that losses like this, for what are just accidents, seemed harsh but rapidplay is not really any different from blitz when you get down to the last few seconds. Pieces are going to be banged down and bounce, moving the piece sideways under pressure often clips another piece and pieces are often going to be encroaching on an adjacent square when they are placed down in a hurry and in all these incidents the players are going to press the clock immediately because that's just habit. Can all these ills be cured by additional time penalties or warnings? Would that lead to a reduction in the number of times these incidents happen? Almost certainly not, so an immediate forfeit, no matter how Draconian, does at least provide a comprehensive solution. Unfortunately it would almost certainly mean I would lose most of my speed games as I get very nervous at the death. At various times I have knocked pieces off the board and in one incident, which Jesper reminded me of, I actually hurled a rook which hit my opponent in attempting to play Rg1-g7.

[NickFaulks]

The rule in the Mind sports games in Beijing in 2008 was that, if the piece fell over after the clock was pressed, it was a loss. This happened many times in that event. I saw Jovanka Houska make her move putting her queen on a square. She then pressed her clock and the queen fell over in slow motion.

This is exactly the scenario I mentioned two pages back, although I had no idea that it had already been a major issue. If organisers choose to innovate by using non-standard pieces that will inevitably cause problems.

[Ian Thompson]

Sagar Shah has composed an excellent article for ChessBase India on this incident a couple of days ago

I don't see how it can be called excellent when it contains the incorrect statement:

"In blitz if you drop a piece on the board and press the clock, which means that you didn't set it back again in your own time, then it is a loss."

which is not true under FIDE Laws.

[MJMcCready]

Is there anything else that can be dropped that will result in losing the game?

[MJMcCready]

Maybe FIDE should write a subsection of what cannot and cannot be dropped.

[Alex Holowczak]

I don't accept that this tournament rule was against the FIDE Laws of Chess.

The Laws of Chess say that in this sort of situation, "[...] The arbiter may penalise the player who displaced the pieces." So the arbiter can choose one of the list of penalties to apply. The tournament rule clarified that in this tournament, the arbiter will always choose "declaring the game to be lost by the offending player" from the list of penalties in this situation.

So I don't think it is accurate to say that

which is not true under FIDE Laws.

I think it's more accurate to say that it *might* be true under FIDE Laws.

[Ian Thompson]

I don't accept that this tournament rule was against the FIDE Laws of Chess.

I don't think anyone's said this tournament's rule was incompatible with the FIDE Laws.

The Laws of Chess say that in this sort of situation, "[...] The arbiter may penalise the player who displaced the pieces." So the arbiter can choose one of the list of penalties to apply. The tournament rule clarified that in this tournament, the arbiter will always choose "declaring the game to be lost by the offending player" from the list of penalties in this situation.

So I don't think it is accurate to say that

which is not true under FIDE Laws.

I think it's more accurate to say that it *might* be true under FIDE Laws.

Shah's statement was that the rule is that displaced pieces lose in blitz games if not corrected in your own time. As you correctly point out, the penalty for a displaced piece is at the arbiter's discretion, so the statement that they always lose is wrong.

If he'd said that displacing pieces could result in losing the game, or if he'd said that non-standard rules were in effect at this tournament, that would have been fine, but he didn't. By going on to say "This rule is not applied in every tournament." he actually implied that this tournament was applying the normal rule, whilst some other tournaments were more lenient in the penalty applied.

[Alex Holowczak]

I don't accept that this tournament rule was against the FIDE Laws of Chess.

I don't think anyone's said this tournament's rule was incompatible with the FIDE Laws.

The Laws of Chess say that in this sort of situation, "[...] The arbiter may penalise the player who displaced the pieces." So the arbiter can choose one of the list of penalties to apply. The tournament rule clarified that in this tournament, the arbiter will always choose "declaring the game to be lost by the offending player" from the list of penalties in this situation.

So I don't think it is accurate to say that

which is not true under FIDE Laws.

I think it's more accurate to say that it *might* be true under FIDE Laws.

Shah's statement was that the rule is that displaced pieces lose in blitz games if not corrected in your own time. As you correctly point out, the penalty for a displaced piece is at the arbiter's discretion, so the statement that they always lose is wrong.

If he'd said that displacing pieces could result in losing the game, or if he'd said that non-standard rules were in effect at this tournament, that would have been fine, but he didn't. By going on to say "This rule is not applied in every tournament." he actually implied that this tournament was applying the normal rule, whilst some other tournaments were more lenient in the penalty applied.

OK, all of this is fair enough. It seems that we agree on the matters of substance, but I didn't quite understand what you were trying to convey.

[Paul Dargan]

I think Ian's point is important - we dont want people trying to claim in this way all over the place - which I've already seen in tournaments that don;t have the rule in place.

Paul

[NickFaulks]

we dont want people trying to claim in this way all over the place

I agree that far too much "claiming the game" goes on. However, if my opponent creates a shambles on the board and then sets my clock running, I want some comeback. In a particularly egregious case, I don't think that an award of the game would necessarily be unreasonable.

[Paul Dargan]

@ Nick - my default reaction is simply to repress the clock

Paul