A couple of Fide rules questions

[Roger Lancaster]

I don't think you should tell a player that they have to make a legal move with the [insert name of piece] - they should be given the opportunity to make a second illegal move. Moreover, what if their ONLY legal move with the [insert name of piece] was checkmate?

In the scenario set out, where White has been told that Qd5-d8+ is an illegal move, if that's all that's said, it's quite likely that an inexperienced player will then try Ke1-f1. The arbiter says, "That's not permitted" or similar, and replaces the K on e1. (According to all that's been said here, Ke1-f1 is not illegal). So after a few moments White plays Ke1-e2. The arbiter again says, "That's not permitted" and replaces the king. Next the player, by now totally confused, tries Ke1-d1 with the same result. By now, the situation is likely to have degenerated to farce, particularly if White next repeats his first try Ke1-f1. Isn't there a provision for relaxing the rules for young and inexperienced players which might usefully be applied in this situation?

[Tim Harding]

The advice you're giving the player that is useful to someone who doesn't know the rules (when they should) is that he would be wasting time analysing moves other than a queen move because he can't play them.

Perhaps, but I don't think that's still preferable from a people-management perspective to having to intervene again a second time later on.

I don't think you should tell a player that they have to make a legal move with the [insert name of piece] - they should be given the opportunity to make a second illegal move. Moreover, what if their ONLY legal move with the [insert name of piece] was checkmate?

Ha ha! Hard cases make bad law. In the circumstances described in the original post (where to get out of a queen check, a queen move was possible) you could not construct a position where White's only legal move complying with touch-move was checkmate.

What an arbiter might say to high-rated opponents might be " remember touch-move" but with less experienced juniors and ordinary adult players, I think they should be reminded which piece had to be moved, unless maybe the player to move was short of time. In general, I don't think arbiters should create opportunities for players to commit irregularities, they should try to avoid them.

In the case someone mentioned where an opponent might not wish to enforce touch-move, actually there is a guidance note to Article 4 in the 2018 Arbiters Manual saying that if the arbiter observes a violation of that article (which includes the touch-move rule, also incorrect castling and incorrect pawn promotion) then "he must always intervene immediately. He should not wait for a claim to be submitted by a player."

Of course the opposite more often happens. A player touches a piece intending to move it but changes his mind. Some seconds/minutes later he moves a different piece. The opponent claims a violation of touch-move but the arbiter (if there is one) has not seen it and the players on adjacent boards have not witnessed it either. So the player who violated touch-move gets away with it.

Here is another case where the arbiter must intervene if he witnesses it.
Older players still sometimes "promote" to an upturned rook if they don't see a queen available. If I see a game where a promotion is imminent I will usually watch until it is executed. In one game last year (in a FIDE-rated weekender between players rated about 1600) a player did this, and I immediately said STOP and paused the clock.

The Arbiters Manual has a guidance note to 3.7.5.3. which explicitly covers this point.
If the opponent had then stopped, I would have turned the rook the right way up and made it clear to both players that this was a rook before restarting the clock.
But before I could say anything else the opponent captured the "queen" (really rook) so I let it stand but said I needed to talk to them both after the round.
I then explained the rule about this, but I said to the second player that he also did something wrong. I said that When the arbiter intervenes it is like the referee in football blowing his whistle; play must immediately halt.

Of course in league matches with no independent arbiter present there are many rules that can be difficult to enforce and many irregularities go uncorrected. That is one reason why I object to league matches under those conditions being FIDE-rated and after this season I probably will not play any more in such matches.

[Roger de Coverly]

Older players still sometimes "promote" to an upturned rook if they don't see a queen available.

Have arbiters ever given a good reason for their declaration of war against this traditional practice?

[Adam Raoof]

I don't think you should tell a player that they have to make a legal move with the [insert name of piece] - they should be given the opportunity to make a second illegal move. Moreover, what if their ONLY legal move with the [insert name of piece] was checkmate?

In the scenario set out, where White has been told that Qd5-d8+ is an illegal move, if that's all that's said, it's quite likely that an inexperienced player will then try Ke1-f1. The arbiter says, "That's not permitted" or similar, and replaces the K on e1. (According to all that's been said here, Ke1-f1 is not illegal). So after a few moments White plays Ke1-e2. The arbiter again says, "That's not permitted" and replaces the king. Next the player, by now totally confused, tries Ke1-d1 with the same result. By now, the situation is likely to have degenerated to farce, particularly if White next repeats his first try Ke1-f1. Isn't there a provision for relaxing the rules for young and inexperienced players which might usefully be applied in this situation?

Ideally you tell a player something along the lines of "you must make a legal move with the piece you touched, if possible". At this point you could tell them that there is no legal move if this is the case. However you should let the players find out for themselves.

If they say "it is not possible to make a legal move with the piece I touched" then after you check this is accurate, you tell them to make any legal move.

If they are wrong, and there is a legal move, then you just have to let them find it in their own time. I had something like this with a couple of juniors in a tournament recently and white was in check, but unable to work out what to play in response. I just had to make sure that they had not been mated - that would have saved some time! I could have put white out of her misery and told her the move to play, but she found it eventually, and learned something from the experience.

Sometimes players confuse "no legal move" with "no decent move" - and I have to explain that the move doesn't have to make sense, as long as it is legal - i.e. blocking a bishop check with a queen.

I also have to explain quite frequently that announcing check is a convention, not a rule, and that it is not underhand for a player to check you and not declare it.

And that there is no such thing as perpetual check in the FIDE rules, only threefold repetition.

[Alex Holowczak]

Older players still sometimes "promote" to an upturned rook if they don't see a queen available.

Have arbiters ever given a good reason for their declaration of war against this traditional practice?

1. A DGT liveboard can't handle it.
2. Apparently, it's not a "traditional practice" all over the world.

[Adam Raoof]

Ha ha! Hard cases make bad law. In the circumstances described in the original post (where to get out of a queen check, a queen move was possible) you could not construct a position where White's only legal move complying with touch-move was checkmate.

The Arbiters Manual has a guidance note to 3.7.5.3. which explicitly covers this point.
If the opponent had then stopped, I would have turned the rook the right way up and made it clear to both players that this was a rook before restarting the clock.

I think you could construct such a position. Not knowing the actual position, I think I could invent one where the only legal move was QxQ checkmate?

Which manual? If someone promotes to an upturned rook, I think the rules allow for this. On their next move, they move the upturned rook diagonally - then you step in as this is an illegal move for a rook. However if you step in as soon as they promote, you are not allowing them to make the illegal move.

[Alex Holowczak]

Ideally you tell a player something along the lines of "you must make a legal move with the piece you touched, if possible".

In this specific case, isn't that exactly the same thing as saying "It's touch move on the Queen"? I accept you've added "if possible", but the player will probably have worked out that it's possible before you've finished the sentence; or at least they're in the middle of the realisation dawning on them. I'd rather just be direct than beat about the bush.

[Alex Holowczak]

Which manual? If someone promotes to an upturned rook, I think the rules allow for this. On their next move, they move the upturned rook diagonally - then you step in as this is an illegal move for a rook. However if you step in as soon as they promote, you are not allowing them to make the illegal move.

So you wouldn't consider an upside-down rook on the board to be an irregularity that needs to be immediately corrected? Why wouldn't you intervene at that point, rather than wait for them to do something that requires you to enforce a stricter penalty?

[IM Jack Rudd]

OK, I've created a position with six pieces, where the only legal move with a specified piece (in this case, the d2 queen) is checkmate.

8/8/2Q5/2q1K3/2k5/8/N2Q4/8

[Adam Raoof]

OK, I've created a position with six pieces, where the only legal move with a specified piece (in this case, the d2 queen) is checkmate.

8/8/2Q5/2q1K3/2k5/8/N2Q4/8

Jack is a God.

[Tim Harding]

Which manual? If someone promotes to an upturned rook, I think the rules allow for this. On their next move, they move the upturned rook diagonally - then you step in as this is an illegal move for a rook. However if you step in as soon as they promote, you are not allowing them to make the illegal move.

http://arbiters.fide.com/images/stories ... 018-v1.pdf

It's the September 2018 version of the FIDE Arbiter Manual. (As yet there is no 2019 manual.)
I see you are listed as a FIDE Arbiter, and at present I am "only" an NA, so I am surprised you don't know this document.

We had better not be co-arbiters at the same event as I can see we disagree on lots of things.

I accept that the arbiter is to be impartial and not assist one player against his opponent.

Giving the players an opportunity to commit irregularities and so lose the game goes beyond that IMHO, especially when dealing with young juniors and some older players who have perhaps not read the last three revisions of FIDE rules, let alone the latest.

In a realistic situation where there are maybe 30-40 games in progress with one or two arbiters only, and a couple of time scrambles about to occur elsewhere in the room, the arbiter cannot stay watching this one game in the hope/fear that the rook will be moved like a queen so that he can declare a probably undeserved victory for the other guy. Instead he should step in when he sees the upturned rook and deal with it. Then he can go to other boards where he is needed.

[Ian Thompson]

I don't think you should tell a player that they have to make a legal move with the [insert name of piece] - they should be given the opportunity to make a second illegal move. Moreover, what if their ONLY legal move with the [insert name of piece] was checkmate?

Then the arbiter has to remember Article 6.9 and declare the game a draw if the player fails to make that only legal move before running out of time.

[Adam Raoof]

Which manual? If someone promotes to an upturned rook, I think the rules allow for this. On their next move, they move the upturned rook diagonally - then you step in as this is an illegal move for a rook. However if you step in as soon as they promote, you are not allowing them to make the illegal move.

So you wouldn't consider an upside-down rook on the board to be an irregularity that needs to be immediately corrected? Why wouldn't you intervene at that point, rather than wait for them to do something that requires you to enforce a stricter penalty?

It may be that FIDE laws say nothing on this subject, but the interpretation I was given is that an upturned rook is a rook - so it is not an irregularity, it's just a rook.

Also, if someone promotes to a "queen", and both they and their opponent sees that this is "stalemate" (and are possibly about to agree a draw), and then you intervene and explain that it is actually a rook - and not stalemate, and then wins - then you have interfered in the game in the same way as if you observed a player announcing checkmate, and explained to their opponent that he had an escape square.

Tim - I am sure we would agree on many more things than disagree. This is just a forum for exchanging opinions, I am quite prepared to be wrong.

[David Buckley]

Lots to unpick here!

1. If he made the claim before the flag fell, then that'd be good enough for me. Of course, White could claim the win on time, but I'd expect the claim to be declined.

2. No, because it wasn't an illegal move. Imagine taking a photograph before Kf1 and after Kf1. If you were told only that Ke1-f1 had been played, then you'd never think there was an illegal move; and that line of thinking applies to this particular situation.

3. This divides arbiters. I would always say "It's touch move on the Queen", or something equivalent to that, in this case. My reason for that is that if you don't, then you just have to intervene in the game again a few seconds later, and I'd rather intervene once than twice. Others argue that this constitutes advice, although I'm not really clear what "advice" is being given that you won't have to give a minute later by way of an explanation when the player moves the wrong piece.

Thanks Alex and all the others who responded. I find your logic convincing particularly on 2. I still have a question concerning 3. The match in question was played in my local league with no arbiter present. My understanding is that being a captain does not give me authority to intervene, for example by claiming touch move on behalf of my team-mate. Is that correct? I didn't say "touch move on the queen" because I was worried that this might count as an intervention. So my question 3 was not whether an arbiter should mention touch move after an illegal move. It was whether a captain can.

[David Buckley]

I don't think you should tell a player that they have to make a legal move with the [insert name of piece] - they should be given the opportunity to make a second illegal move. Moreover, what if their ONLY legal move with the [insert name of piece] was checkmate?

Then the arbiter has to remember Article 6.9 and declare the game a draw if the player fails to make that only legal move before running out of time.

I like this answer!