English Chess Forum

With all the excitement around the FIDE President's non-resignation, there's also a new version of the Laws of Chess to come into force from 1st July 2017.

http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... chess.html
http://www.fide.com/component/handbook/ ... ew=article

I haven't seen a line by line analyis of the changes, but it seems to be a case of rewording, rather than a substantive change. Appendix G (claiming a draw when short of time) has become Guidelines III with item 5 being one of the relevant sections.

Roger de Coverly wrote:With all the excitement around the FIDE President's non-resignation, there's also a new version of the Laws of Chess to come into force from 1st July 2017.

I haven't seen a line by line analysis of the changes

I think it's now time we did, given that there is less than three months before these go live.

There are also revised Title and Rating Regulations, which I hope to check over the weekend.

Roger de Coverly wrote:I haven't seen a line by line analyis of the changes

It appears on the Rules Commission pages of the FIDE website.

The CAA pages will also have it in a few days.

Is it just me who thinks the rules for blind players sound farcical?

Joshua Gibbs wrote:Is it just me who thinks the rules for blind players sound farcical?

They look reasonable to me. What issue do you have with them?

I read somewhere that FIDE pairing rules are being changed so that taking a voluntary bye does not avert being given a pairing induced bye later in the tournament.

IM Jack Rudd wrote:

Joshua Gibbs wrote:Is it just me who thinks the rules for blind players sound farcical?

They look reasonable to me. What issue do you have with them?

why does one have to count in German?

Alex McFarlane wrote: It appears on the Rules Commission pages of the FIDE website.

http://rules.fide.com/images/stories/La ... GA__PB.pdf

They appear to have deleted the section that allowed a totally blocked position to be an immediate draw.

9.7 The game is drawn when a position is reached from which a checkmate cannot occur by any possible series of legal moves. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing this position was in accordance with Article 3 and Articles 4.2 4.7.

except that 5.2.2 says much the same

5.2.2 The game is drawn when a position has arisen in which neither player can checkmate the opponent’s king with any series of legal moves. The game is said to end in a ‘dead position’. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the position was in accordance with Article 3 and Articles 4.2 – 4.7.

The rules for visually handicapped players are the same as they've been for many years apart from the rewording to allow speaking digital clocks. As an international organisation, FIDE would need to specify a default language for communication. As to why they chose German, the reasons are lost in time. Games between two English speakers would usually use English.

Joshua Gibbs wrote: why does one have to count in German?

It's not so much counting as having to announce the moves in German.

Roger de Coverly wrote:

Joshua Gibbs wrote: why does one have to count in German?

It's not so much counting as having to announce the moves in German.

does it not strike you as daft?

Joshua Gibbs wrote: does it not strike you as daft?

A body writing a set of rules for International chess has to take into account the possibility of two players being paired that have no language in common. It therefore needs to specify one as a default. When British players get to play a British blind player, they would use English algebraic.

The Braille Association approves that section.

Some time ago (12 years would be my guess) FIDE tried to change the move announcement to English but the IBCA vetoed it.
I think the logic is that things like e5 and c5 are too similar in sound.

Chess Scotland submitted the changes which did take place but these did not appear in the first draft of the new Laws and only appeared later after approval by IBCA.

I assume Joshua that you think the only reasonable default language is English? How convenient.

Richard Bates wrote:I read somewhere that FIDE pairing rules are being changed so that taking a voluntary bye does not avert being given a pairing induced bye later in the tournament.

I heard that somewhere too. The specific somewhere - the Swiss Pairings meeting in the FIDE Congress in Abu Dhabi in 2016. There were some grumbles from the UK contingent in attendance, but that was about it.

The new Dutch system regulations have been published: https://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.html ... ew=article

At-a-glance, they appear silent on that point.

Dewi Jones wrote:I assume Joshua that you think the only reasonable default language is English? How convenient.

I think the two players should agree before hand or theblind player should be able to decide which language s/he wants