Youngest qualified arbiter in England?

[Sean Hewitt]

One bit of advice.....watch arbiters in action and see what they do.

A truly rare and wonderful sight. Few people are lucky enough to have witnessed one of these creatures venturing out of their natural habitat.

[ThomasThorpe]

Natural habitat, hah!!! GCSE's will take priority, yes, however I'm afraid to say chess will still have to take its toll on me But yes, I will drop back on it a bit, and probably only do the very local congresses and in the summer hols Sheffield hopefully

[Stewart Reuben]

Lee Coyle from Liverpool became a BCF Arbiter at 14. That he was a pupil at the same school as where Peter Purland and David Welch taught may have helped. He acted as an arbiter at the British in 1988. My youngest-ever assistant was Nathanael Lutton at the Mind Sports Olympiad when he was 6. He was very valuable.
I am delighted youngsters are again coming into chess administration. In England we do not have the hang-ups about age that FIDE have. It was not always liked that. Sophia Gorman became an International Arbiter when 17. It would have been hard to refuse somebody who had already been Deputy Arbiter at the World Championship Semi-Finals.
Stewart Reuben

[IanDavis]

When will we see a British Chess Arbitration Championship?

[Stewart Reuben]

We did have an Arbiters Mind Sports competition at the Mind Sports Olympiad some years ago. The questions ranged across several different disciplines. The chess arbiters did best. The bridge directors thought it was beneath them.
It is at the back of the minds of John Upham and myself to have a COM test for FIDE arbiters. The problem would be designing a bank of 50 multiple-choice questions. 5 possible choices with only one correct answer would be a high mountain to scale. e.g.
White has K + R aginst K + B. White's flag falls. What is the result?
a. Win for White
b. Win for Black
c. Draw
d. Replay the game
e. If White can demonstrate a forced with of the bishop or checkmate in the next two moves, he wins. Otherwise a draw.

Stewart Reuben

[Roger de Coverly]

White has K + R against K + B. White's flag falls. What is the result?
a. Win for White
b. Win for Black
c. Draw

Players need to know this as well - it affects whether you can still play for a win without risking losing.

If I understood the Dresden changes correctly, the wording is intended to indicate that a loss on time applies if a help-mate can be constructed. So with no helpmate K&R v K&B is a draw if the Rook runs out of time, but K&R v K&N is a win for the Knight *. If the Bishop or Knight claims a draw under 10.2, that's when the arbiter could have one of their more difficult decisions.


* think White King a1, Black King a3, White Rook b1. With a Black Bishop (say Bc3+) you have Rb2. With a Knight, you have Nc2 mate.

[Alex Holowczak]

If the Bishop or Knight claims a draw under 10.2, that's when the arbiter could have one of their more difficult decisions.

Maybe they could just award 1 point to the KR, and 1/2 to the KN or KB. That would be keeping to the recent trend, anyway.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

It seems counter-intuitive that KB vs KR would be a draw if the side with the material advantage runs out of time, but if that player had a bishop as well (of the opposite colour to their opponent's) then they would lose on time! (e.g. white bishop on e3, white king on g3, black bishop on f1, black king on g1 and black rook on h1). You could have a situation where the side with the material advantage is trying to give away their bishop so that they could play on for a win with KR vs KB knowing that they had the draw in the bag if they ran out of time.

[Maxim Devereaux]

A good point, but no more lunatic than that situation from the Women's World cup where the players played on in an Armageddon game with K+N each. The side needing to draw needs to give away their knight (by forking their oppenent's king and knight with it, and so forcing its capture), while the side needing to win must either trick their opponent into the helpmate (surely impossible) or win on time so they can claim the helpmate win, which is what actually happened, if memory serves.

[IanDavis]

A good point, but no more lunatic than that situation from the Women's World cup where the players played on in an Armageddon game with K+N each. The side needing to draw needs to give away their knight (by forking their oppenent's king and knight with it, and so forcing its capture), while the side needing to win must either trick their opponent into the helpmate (surely impossible) or win on time so they can claim the helpmate win, which is what actually happened, if memory serves.

Completely agree. This is absolutely against the integrity of chess.

[Alex Holowczak]

A good point, but no more lunatic than that situation from the Women's World cup where the players played on in an Armageddon game with K+N each. The side needing to draw needs to give away their knight (by forking their oppenent's king and knight with it, and so forcing its capture), while the side needing to win must either trick their opponent into the helpmate (surely impossible) or win on time so they can claim the helpmate win, which is what actually happened, if memory serves.

She could also have drawn by the fifty-move rule (or three-fold repetition). Given there was one arbiter for one game, then the arbiter would have been keeping count.

[Stewart Reuben]

The Laws were changed in 2009. Provided there is adequate supervision, as in the Women's World Cup case, the normal Laws of Chess now apply, apart from keeping score, for either rapidplay or blitz. Thus a claim can be made under 10.2.
Stewart Reuben

[Ian Thompson]

It is at the back of the minds of John Upham and myself to have a COM test for FIDE arbiters. The problem would be designing a bank of 50 multiple-choice questions. 5 possible choices with only one correct answer would be a high mountain to scale.

I'd have thought that multiple-choice questions could only ever be part of an arbiters' exam. You could use it to test knowledge of factual aspects of the laws of chess, but not more subjective matters. For example, most of the questions in the current ECF Arbiter's exam are of the type "This is what happened. What would you do and why?"

I think a multiple-choice test would be a good addition to written arbiter examinations, but not a substitute for them.

[Stewart Reuben]

Ian Thompson. What I was suggesting is that it might be impossible to have a multiple choice quiz even as part of an arbiters' exam as it would be so hard to frame the questions. The attraction of multiple choice is that it is easy to mark and can be taken by arbiters for whom English is not their first language. Some of the exams I have set have primarily ended up as an English translation test.

But we have left the original thread. How can we attract new young arbiters and organisers?

Stewart Reuben

[Alex Holowczak]

How can we attract new young arbiters and organisers?

I think we're doing OK.

In the 14-21 range, there are:
Two people who have passed arbiters exams
The captain of the GM Open team in the County Championship
Several games-inputters
Me

I don't know how this compares with previous generations, but it is at least a start.

More youngsters should be actively asked/invited to take the arbiters test, rather than left to volunteer for it. Maybe even let juniors take the test for free (although it's only £5 + accommodation, so it's not exactly breaking the bank). Like everything, if you're pro-active about it, you tend to get more interest!

As for organisation... That's more difficult. Perhaps older organisers, who are organising things anyway, should invite younger people to help out with the organisation. That way though, there's a high chance that people won't be interested. If so, fair enough.

The other problem is getting people to run clubs, be delegates etc. I'd quite like to meet people under 30 at Meetings. Heck, I'd settle for under 40...