A truly rare and wonderful sight. Few people are lucky enough to have witnessed one of these creatures venturing out of their natural habitat.Kevin Thurlow wrote: 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.Kevin Thurlow wrote: One bit of advice.....watch arbiters in action and see what they do.
Players need to know this as well - it affects whether you can still play for a win without risking losing.Stewart Reuben wrote: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
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.Roger de Coverly wrote:If the Bishop or Knight claims a draw under 10.2, that's when the arbiter could have one of their more difficult decisions.
Completely agree. This is absolutely against the integrity of chess.Maxim Devereaux wrote: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.Maxim Devereaux wrote: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.
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?"Stewart Reuben wrote: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 think we're doing OK.Stewart Reuben wrote:How can we attract new young arbiters and organisers?