Drop a piece lose the game

[Stewart Reuben]

Jesper I am pleased to note you answered your own question about why it would be unwise to use smartphones in a chess competition.

Concerning pieces that have fallen on their side. Try 3.10. How can a piece which is not upright be legal? It fails as a legal move as in 3.10b. It also fails as an illegal position which is defined as one that cannot be reached by any series of legal moves.

[Paul Dargan]

Those with access to Gawain Jones and Sue's facebook pages will see a solution to the knocked-over piece problem here:

https://www.facebook.com/p0ubelle/posts ... 8783859388

Paul Dargan

[Ian Thompson]

Concerning pieces that have fallen on their side. Try 3.10. How can a piece which is not upright be legal? It fails as a legal move as in 3.10b.

As you're saying that an accidentally knocked over piece when it's not your move is an illegal move, it follows that the player who did this has also broken Law 1.1 (moving when it's not his move) and will also have broken Rule 4.1 if he knocked the piece over with anything other than his hand. What he won't have broken though is any rule referring to completed moves because those rules require him to have pressed his clock after he made the move.

I'll leave others to add to the list of ridiculous rulings that would arise if you treated an accidentally knocked over piece as an illegal move as I'm sure there must be many more.

[Stewart Reuben]

A player makes a move, knocks a piece over and presses the clock. It is a completed illegal move.
The player is a normal player, restarts his clock and corrects the error.
A player makes a move, presses the clock and now knocks a piece over in his opponent's time. It is illegal.
He just sits there looking at the mess.
A player knocks over a piece while his clock is going. That is illegal. He corrects the error in his own time. The arbiter might award the opponent extra time because his thinking has been disturbed.

[Roger de Coverly]

I'll leave others to add to the list of ridiculous rulings that would arise if you treated an accidentally knocked over piece as an illegal move as I'm sure there must be many more.

You could also argue that a game of chess is actually played in the mind. The physical board and pieces are an aide-memoire, a display mechanism for spectators and arbiters and a means of conveying the next move.

[Roger de Coverly]

A player makes a move, presses the clock and now knocks a piece over in his opponent's time. It is illegal.

That seems the nub of the dispute. Some arbiters want it to cause loss of the game. For the most part, players don't, even at Blitz.

[Jesper Norgaard]

A player makes a move, knocks a piece over and presses the clock. It is a completed illegal move.

You may have a point if the knocked over piece is on the floor, but not if it is lying on it's correct square. The problem is that no rule in the Laws of Chess say how a piece must stand on it's square. I always wondered why there is no such clause, as it would not be impossible to write one using common sense. However, it may become misleading when talking about a magnetic chess set with flat pieces - what is up and down? In fact an upturned rook is not illegal, if it stands on it's correct square. There is no article that say you can't stand a rook on it's head.

The player is a normal player, restarts his clock and corrects the error.

That would certainly be inappropriate if there is a 30 seconds increment. It is the reason why this is discouraged, and instead he should stop the clocks and get the arbiters help to sort out the mess.

A player makes a move, presses the clock and now knocks a piece over in his opponent's time. It is illegal.
He just sits there looking at the mess.

Where exactly does it say that knocking over a piece in the opponent's time is illegal? There is no such rule, you are apparently inventing it on the fly. Since you don't recognize knocked over pieces as displaced pieces, I have no idea what article you are talking about. The player already completed his move, so it is not an illegal move. And which article handles knocked over pieces again?

A player knocks over a piece while his clock is going. That is illegal. He corrects the error in his own time. The arbiter might award the opponent extra time because his thinking has been disturbed.

If a player displaces a piece, he must correct it in his own time. Apparently 7.4 is not about knocked over pieces according to you?

[Paul Dargan]

I think all this is really an attempt to reverse engineer the interpretation desired.

Clearly displace pieces are not an illegal move - indeed they may not be a move at all, you can knock over pieces when standing-up, etc. The fact that there is no longer a simple manner to restart the opponents clock without adding increments to both sides, and the often very small amounts of time left on the clock in blitz makes arbiter intervention complicated - so there is a desire for a simple one-size-fits all solution.

If that is what is desired by some people - then let's just come out and say that, not try ot pretend that the current laws actually support the position.

Paul

[NickFaulks]

I think all this is really an attempt to reverse engineer the interpretation desired.

I think that is generally true of recent changes to the Laws. So long as their central building block is the concept of the "illegal move" it probably cannot be otherwise.

[Kevin O'Rourke]

farce

[Michael Flatt]

Having just come across FIDE Arbiters Magazine No 3 (August 2016)[1], I notice that it includes a review of some incidents occurring during recent games and provides helpful advice:

Case A: No “Dropped Piece” Rule
Case B: Illegal Move Irregularities
Case C: Promotion Irregularities
Case D: Board and Clock Placements
Case E: Visually Handicapped Cheating
Case F: “j’adoube” Leads to Resignation
Case G: Aronian-Nakamura @ Candidates

Reference
[1] FIDE Arbiters Magazine No 3: http://arbiters.fide.com/images/stories ... t_2016.pdf

[John Hickman]

Having just come across FIDE Arbiters Magazine

Has it appeared on 'Have I got news for you' yet?

[Roger de Coverly]

Case A: No “Dropped Piece” Rule

This helpfully clarifies that unless competition rules say otherwise, the relevant rule is the one about displaced pieces, not illegal moves.

The primary rule to apply in such situations is 7.4 (rule A.4.b is NOT applicable)
7.4 If a player displaces one or more pieces, he shall re-establish the correct position in his own time. If necessary, either the player or his opponent shall stop the chess clock and ask for the arbiter’s assistance. The arbiter may penalise the player who displaced the pieces.
Article A.4.b (from Rapidplay Appendix A) is regarding illegal moves. BUT, displaced pieces, as covered in Article 7.4 above, are NOT illegal moves.