English Chess Forum

Please is there anywhere a chronicle-type list with dates of the changes of FIDE rules since the beginning of FIDE? (Today in a message I read that there is an new or newish rule saying that a player loses if his mobile phone rings during a game.)

Not a particularly new rule now. If you did not know that rule existed isn't it about time you actually read the rules?

The definitive set are available on the FIDE website http://www.fide.com/ . In section E of the handbook under FIDE.

Anthony Appleyard wrote:Today in a message I read that there is an new or newish rule saying that a player loses if his mobile phone rings during a game.

Your source is not very reliable. It's been a rule since 1 July 2005.

Ian Thompson wrote:Your source is not very reliable. It's been a rule since 1 July 2005.

Thanks. I found the FIDE rules: they are at http://www.fide.com/handbook?option=com_handbook.

(Sorry: I was born in 1942, and to me anything after year 2000 is new.)

To answer the original query, you can find the Laws of Chess (going back to the year dot) on the Chess Arbiters Association website under the link "Laws".

Mike Gunn wrote:To answer the original query, you can find the Laws of Chess (going back to the year dot) on the Chess Arbiters Association website under the link "Laws".

http://chessarbitersassociation.co.uk/html/laws.html

WARNING

The Chess Arbiter's Association website is flagged by Avast Antivirus as appearing to carry malware. Avast objects to a link on the page to a site www.watchmytraffic.com via / ... very long hex number ... /counter.img?theme.

I wouldn't go there until someone from the CAA cleans up the problem or can confidently state that it is a false positive.

Re the CAA site.

When I was first told there was a problem I had the site host investigate. He assured me that it was a false negative (as opposed to a false positive). He hosts several chess sites so should have been aware of any real problems.

Hi Alex

That will be the 'Common Sense Virus' trying to get in.
The Chess Arbiter's Association website is bound
to flag that up as a warning and try and stamp it out.

Thanks, Alex. That will do for me. (Although your host's definition of "false negative" is a bit odd - something was found, although it was nothing that needed to be found, normally known as a "false positive".) I raised this issue on the Avast Forum, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic= ... msg1028874, and the problem with Avast should be resolved at some point.

Anthony Appleyard wrote:

Mike Gunn wrote:To answer the original query, you can find the Laws of Chess (going back to the year dot) on the Chess Arbiters Association website under the link "Laws".

http://chessarbitersassociation.co.uk/html/laws.html

Yes that is a useful site and my laptop's Bullguard antivirus did not signal any problem with it.

I am surprised, however, that they date Chess Praxis 1871 instead of 1860 and so place it later than the BCA rules which were a reaction to Staunton. I suppose the Arbiters Association were working from a later reprint but they should fix that and check for any wording differences between editions.

The biggest flaw in the Praxis rules was that a "dummy pawn" was possible (not promoting a pawn that reached the 8th). Although this never happened in tournament games, it was necessary to eliminate that possibility if foreign masters were to play in England.

The 1883 laws by Woodgate and Donisthorpe were an attempt to do so, but neglected to state that the new piece must be of the same colour. If I recall correctly, Chigorin demonstrated the absurdity of the wording by composing a little problem to which the solution was promoting to an enemy piece.
It can be observed that of the rule sets quoted on the AA website, the 1912 BCF rules seem to be the first (in English anyway) to fix that problem.

It would be good to have a translation of the German laws in force in the 1860s-1880s (Bilguers Handbuch).
Does anyone know of such a translation?

The 1883 London tournament laws also struggled with the rules about claiming draws (by repetition too, but especially the 50-move rule for endgames) which were unsatisfactory in both the Staunton and BCA versions. There was criticism at the time of the formulation they adopted (e.g. by W. N. Potter in 'Land and Water', 15 December). In 1879 there had been a tournament game between Blackburne and Mason whose result depended on this issue.

I believe there was an article in BCM on the history of laws about draws a while back but I forget the reference. Maybe someone can supply, please?

Anthony Appleyard wrote:

Mike Gunn wrote:To answer the original query, you can find the Laws of Chess (going back to the year dot) on the Chess Arbiters Association website under the link "Laws".

http://chessarbitersassociation.co.uk/html/laws.html

Yes that is a useful site and my laptop's Bullguard antivirus did not signal any problem with it.

I am surprised, however, that they date Chess Praxis 1871 instead of 1860 and so place it later than the BCA rules which were a reaction to Staunton. I suppose the Arbiters Association were working from a later reprint but they should fix that and check for any wording differences between editions.

The biggest flaw in the Praxis rules was that a "dummy pawn" was possible (not promoting a pawn that reached the 8th). Although this never happened in tournament games, it was necessary to eliminate that possibility if foreign masters were to play in England.

The 1883 laws by Woodgate and Donisthorpe were an attempt to do so, but neglected to state that the new piece must be of the same colour. If I recall correctly, Chigorin demonstrated the absurdity of the wording by composing a little problem to which the solution was promoting to an enemy piece.
It can be observed that of the rule sets quoted on the AA website, the 1912 BCF rules seem to be the first (in English anyway) to fix that problem.

It would be good to have a translation of the German laws in force in the 1860s-1880s (Bilguers Handbuch).
Does anyone know of such a translation?

The 1883 London tournament laws also struggled with the rules about claiming draws (by repetition too, but especially the 50-move rule for endgames) which were unsatisfactory in both the Staunton and BCA versions. There was criticism at the time of the formulation they adopted (e.g. by W. N. Potter in 'Land and Water', 15 December). In 1879 there had been a tournament game between Blackburne and Mason whose result depended on this issue.

I believe there was an article in BCM on the history of laws about draws a while back but I forget the reference. Maybe someone can supply, please?

Sorry, everyone, but I have been looking into that site http://www.watchmytraffic.com site that the CAA website links to. It's seems to be bad news. It is hosted in the Russian Federation at 213.108.252.185. That address has been used repeatedly over the past year and more for the ZeroAccess Botnet (see http://www.sophos.com/en-us/medialibrar ... Botnet.pdf). I cannot find anything directly about http://www.watchmytraffic.com, but given that it uses some extremely dodgy hosting, and Avast repeatedly kicks it out, my recommendation to anybody and everybody out there is: avoid until they remove their usage of www.watchmytraffic.com.

The counter has been removed to ensure safety.

Thanks, Alex, that's very sensible. Avast is now happy with your site.

Could I make a recommendation? If you want a displayed visitor counter, why not use either the image or text counter from The NMS Project? You can find both at NMS Scripts. The NMS Project was set up by the London Perlmongers, to provide secure scripts for common web tasks, which inexperienced non-technical people can easily install on a website, without having to worry about security being compromised.

By the way, for anyone who didn't understand what the problem was with the counter that was being used, I would recommend that they read Zero Access Botnet, which explains:

So what does ZeroAccess actually do? It mines bitcoins and runs click fraud.[...snip...]

During the install of the rootkit, there is some other suspicious activity that happens. One request is masked as a hit against a counter:

http://[counter_site]/[unique_id]/counter.img?theme=[number]&digits=10&siteId=[number]

The counter site is hosted on 213.108.252.185. The Sophos paper notes bigfatcounters.com, legitfreecounters.com, and forever-counters.com being used. There are other counter sites hosted here as well.

I would advise anyone who visited the site recently to carry out a boot scan using an up-to-date virus scanner, looking for the installation of a rootkit. A rootkit is just about the worst news you can get in terms of PC security compromises, and can be quite difficult to actually discover should you be infected.