English Chess Forum

I'm looking at this page which links to rules for events to be ECF rated:

https://www.englishchess.org.uk/ecf-tournament-rules/

The link is to "English Chess Federation Tournament Rules V2 April 2021". Where can be found...

Section A – Compulsory Rules

[...]

3. When a non-incremental time limit is used the regulation of the event shall specify whether the game is played according to Guidelines III (Quickplay Finishes), as described in Guidelines III.2.1. If so, then the
regulations of an event shall specify the procedure for the player having the move and less than two minutes left on his clock for a draw claim. There are two options: according to Guideline III.4 of the FIDE Laws of Chess, an increment of an extra five seconds shall be introduced for both players or according to Guideline III.5 of the FIDE Laws of Chess, a draw claim procedure shall follow. If these matters are not specified, then, for example, king and knight v king and knight can be played on until one flag falls.

I hope I'm not quoting out of context, but does this mean that if I'm running a 75 minutes each (no increment) standardplay tournament and beforehand I did not specify "matters", that two-minute "normal means" draw claims are not valid?

MSoszynski wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 29, 2021 9:42 pm

does this mean that if I'm running a 75 minutes each (no increment) standardplay tournament and beforehand I did not specify "matters", that two-minute "normal means" draw claims are not valid?

Apparently so, and that is as described in FIDE's Laws.

I imagine players will expect Guidelines III to be in force, but it is evidently important that you do not forget to say so.

I remember explicitly mentioning that we were playing to Guideline III.5 in the opening announcements for Paignton 2018.

(For Paignton 2019, we switched to incremental time controls, so the problem went away.)

I hope tournament organisers also make a note of anyone trying to flag their opponents with king and Knight Vs king and blacklist them - there is no room for that sort of idiotic internet play in proper chess

Joey Stewart wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:10 pm

I hope tournament organisers also make a note of anyone trying to flag their opponents with king and Knight Vs king and blacklist them - there is no room for that sort of idiotic internet play in proper chess

King and Knight vs King is actually a draw regardless of time control, because no mate is possible. But personally I prefer to make a note of organisers whose tournaments do not use increments, and blacklist them.

Joey probably meant to write king and Knight Vs king and knight. That can indeed be played on in the absence of a quickplay finish rule. Some FIDE people preferred that, disliking the fact that the arbiter might otherwise have to make a subjective decision. The majority of people wanted to delete quickplay finishes from the FIDE Laws. But Makro, then Deputy President, said it would be too divisive. So QPF were reinstated by me. It is time they were now removed as increments are a far better system and FIDE could buy some clocks for federations too poor to buy their own.

Sasikiran played on with K + 2N against bare king for nearly 50 moves against Topalov. It was the Olympiad and there was nobody senior to me to be seen, nor anybody I could contact to speak to his match captain. It delayed my going to dinner for about an hour.
I asked the young Indian why he did that. He responded, 'I have never come across that situation before'. At one time, that particular endgame was declared as a draw. But we found no other examples and the law was dropped, possibly by accident.

"Sasikiran played on with K + 2N against bare king for nearly 50 moves against Topalov."

Maybe not that polite as it's a theoretical draw, but it is possible to win. Magnus has been beating GMs in R+4 vs R+3 on the same side of the board, and people didn't seem to have a problem with that.