English Chess Forum

Chris Rice wrote: The arbiter did look a little confused

r3r1k1/pp3ppp/5B2/q1bppb2/2P5/P1N1P3/1PnN1PPP/2QRKB1R w K - 1 15

This is the position after Black's 14th move. It is still legal for white to later castle. The repetition draw at move 18 can only come about by White announcing an intention to play 19. Ke2 as the position at move 18 has not appeared three times once castling rights are considered.





1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 e6 3. c4 d5 4. Nc3 Be7 5. Bf4 O-O 6. e3 c5 7. dxc5 Bxc5 8. a3 Nc6 9. Qc2 Qa5 10. Rd1 Re8 11. Nd2 e5 12. Bg5 Nd4 13. Qc1 Bf5 14. Bxf6 Nc2+ 15. Ke2 Nd4+ 16. Ke1 Nc2+ 17. Ke2 Nd4+ 18. Ke1 Nc2+

Roger de Coverly wrote: The repetition draw at move 18 can only come about by White announcing an intention to play 19. Ke2 as the position at move 18 has not appeared three times once castling rights are considered.

At one of my earliest Rules Commission meetings I felt that an inordinate amount of time was spent on this seemingly minor detail. I'm more used to that now.

Final round Chess24 report and it's a long one. However, one thing that surprised me was the following passage:

"One curiosity is that the prize ceremony saw a rare public appearance for tournament sponsor Isai Scheinberg. He co-founded the world's largest poker room, PokerStars, with his son Mark, who Forbes give a net worth of $4.5 billion. Isai is a hero for many for being instrumental in the poker boom, though he also has an unwanted claim to fame as the only remaining one of 11 defendants indicted in the Black Friday criminal case not to have faced a US court over violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and other charges. There's been some speculation that he might "turn himself in" to finally bring an end to a saga that hit poker sites around the world hard, and to enable him once again to travel freely."

Was anything said about dates for the Isle of Man tournament in 2018? Or whether it would definitely happen next year?

With the Batumi olympiad scheduled for 23 Sept-7 Oct and the EU Club Cup in Rhodes 13-21 Oct, there seems to be the need for a serious date shift or a clash with the latter event?

Well yes, but once the arbiter has been summoned and the three, (two players and the arbiter) understand that the queen is not going to take the knight, and the position is going to be repeated, and that even with the 30 move rule in place it is OK to agree a draw....

The arbiter would have perhaps have had more abuse for being overly officious in pointing out that the position was going to need to go around once more, because it would then have just gone around once more, I suspect.


So is the arbiter just checking it all out, yes.
Is he a bit confused? I would suggest that he was just confirming the intentions of the players.

Should he have dismissed the claim and gone back 15 seconds later to then agree essentially the same claim? You tell me.

Alan Atkinson wrote: The arbiter would have perhaps have had more abuse for being overly officious in pointing out that the position was going to need to go around once more, because it would then have just gone around once more, I suspect.

This is what John Saunders wrote in his round 9 report
http://iominternationalchess.com/news-m ... eport.html

*Re the repetition: it turns out it wasn't a strictly legal repetition under FIDE law 9.2. After 14...Nc2+, when the first of the three putative identical positions arose, the white king still had the legal right to castle later in the game. That was not the case after moves 16...Nc2+ or 18...Nc2+, therefore position 1 is not considered to be identical to positions 2 and 3 under the law. You can see that, legally, White could have made a capture on move 15 with 15.Qxc2 and the white king could later have castled but, interestingly, I have it on good authority that position 1 would still not have been considered identical to positions 2 and 3 even if, on move 15, the white king had no other option than to move, thus ruling out future castling anyway. Had the arbiter spotted this irregularity, the threefold repetition claim would have failed and the game continued (albeit only as far as the next move, when White could have claimed, or else for one further repetition by Black, assuming that the players were still minded to draw in this way).

There's a picture of the scoresheets as well
http://iominternationalchess.com/images ... 159589.jpg

The other way for Magnus to claim a draw would have been to write Ke2 as the 19th move, but without actually playing it.

Tim Harding wrote:With the Batumi olympiad scheduled for 23 Sept-7 Oct and the EU Club Cup in Rhodes 13-21 Oct, there seems to be the need for a serious date shift or a clash with the latter event?

The EPSCA AGM set its date for 29th September, 2018, on the understanding that Peter Purland could make that date because it wouldn't clash with the Isle of Man. "Oh, when's Isle of Man then?", I asked. "Middle of October".

"Middle of October".

So those of us pondering whether to play both Isle of Man and Guernsey can save some money...

Roger de Coverly wrote:

Alan Atkinson wrote:

This is what John Saunders wrote in his round 9 report
http://iominternationalchess.com/news-m ... eport.html
...
There's a picture of the scoresheets as well
http://iominternationalchess.com/images ... 159589.jpg

I wonder if for an arbiter this is the equivalent of missing a move that would have forced resignation.

Perhaps the arbiter in question will be spending the rest of his life lamenting that he missed an opportunity to make the world champion make another move?

Chris Rice wrote:Final round Chess24 report and it's a long one. However, one thing that surprised me was the following passage:

"One curiosity is that the prize ceremony saw a rare public appearance for tournament sponsor Isai Scheinberg. He co-founded the world's largest poker room, PokerStars, with his son Mark, who Forbes give a net worth of $4.5 billion. Isai is a hero for many for being instrumental in the poker boom, though he also has an unwanted claim to fame as the only remaining one of 11 defendants indicted in the Black Friday criminal case not to have faced a US court over violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and other charges. There's been some speculation that he might "turn himself in" to finally bring an end to a saga that hit poker sites around the world hard, and to enable him once again to travel freely."

Credit to Colin for mentioning this.

Alex Holowczak wrote:

Tim Harding wrote:With the Batumi olympiad scheduled for 23 Sept-7 Oct and the EU Club Cup in Rhodes 13-21 Oct, there seems to be the need for a serious date shift or a clash with the latter event?

The EPSCA AGM set its date for 29th September, 2018, on the understanding that Peter Purland could make that date because it wouldn't clash with the Isle of Man. "Oh, when's Isle of Man then?", I asked. "Middle of October".

IoM 20-28 October 2018 Anna Rudolf

Re The missing move to make the position a genuine 3 fold rep.
In the Carlsen - Nakamura game (see above) and a wee minor
point I'd cleared up in plain English.

Sergey Karjakin - Hikaru Nakamura, Bilbao 2016

A very similar situation from a very similar position.
(The identical position was reached after Black's 12th move.)

Here...
r1b1r1k1/pp3ppp/5n2/2bpp1B1/N1Pn4/P3P3/1P1N1PPP/3RKB1R b K - 0 14
...Nakamura played Nc2+ and Nd4+ etc....

But again the game was drawn before White played the 3rd Ke2.
1. c4 Nf6 2. Nc3 e6 3. Nf3 d5 4. d4 Be7 5. Bf4 O-O 6. e3 c5 7. dc5 Bc5 8. Qc2 Nc6 9. a3 Qa5 10. Rd1 Re8 11. Nd2 e5 12. Bg5 Nd4 13. Qa4 Qa4 14. Na4 Nc2 15. Ke2 Nd4 16. Ke1 Nc2 17. Ke2 Nd4 18. Ke1 Nc2
Final Position
r1b1r1k1/pp3ppp/5n2/2bpp1B1/N1P5/P3P3/1PnN1PPP/3RKB1R w - - 9 19
I know about the castling option in Carlsen - Nakamura game, it is the
same here but 19.Ke2 is the only legal move (Carlsen had Qxc2)
So, legally, did 19. Ke2 have to played or written on the score sheet
here because 19. Ke2 is the only move White can play in that position.

Another interesting point about this game is the postmortem interview.
Karjakin said after Nakamura's 12...Nd4 he was out of the book and chopped Queens.

12...Nd4 first appeared in Korchnoi - Karpov 1978 and Karjakin recently called
James Tarjan a unknown player. He appears to have no chess history of the 70's.
Future opponents should book up on 70's theory. You will catch him.

Geoff Chandler wrote:I know about the castling option in Carlsen - Nakamura game, it is the
same here but 19.Ke2 is the only legal move (Carlsen had Qxc2)
So, legally, did 19. Ke2 have to played or written on the score sheet
here because 19. Ke2 is the only move White can play in that position.

The answer must be yes because there are other possibilities - resign, lose on time or be forfeited for your mobile phone going off, for example.

Hi Ian,

I'm thinking yes it must be played but the only legal move option had me pondering.

Twice Nakamura has been involved, maybe it's him stopping the clocks and
calling across the arbiter over because he (and me!) do not know the exact rules.