Accidentally displacing a piece

[Giulio Simeone]

the opponent says that he deliberately touched his king first, and the arbiter says he saw him pick up the king (which Giulio has no recollection of doing, so is unable to contest), then I believe that, considering the evidence holistically, the arbiter is compelled to require Giulio to move the king.

Let me say that what my opponent said is not, to use an euphemism, very trustworthy. I have already said that roman arbiters and organizers know him very well for his bad sportmanship. Biancotti saw me picking up the king, and I believe he saw well, but you have just stated that bumping-picking-restoring does not require to move the picked-up piece.

[Giulio Simeone]

To make some humour: if I had knocked down the king, I'm sure that Albertini would have called the arbiter and claimed I had resigned, and I would have lost a full point!!

[Giulio Simeone]

Why on earth was he observing such as intrinsically uninteresting position, which your opponent could easily have resigned? You say you had 25 minutes left too - was your opponent in time trouble?

I really don't know, John, why the arbiter was observing the game, indeed I was very unlucky. As you said, if there wasn't any arbiter watching, it would have been his (dishonest) word against my (honest) word. No, he wasn't in time trouble, we both had been in serious time trouble before move 40th, but then had received the 30-minutes bonus. As the game was practically finished, we both were playing quite quickly.

disputes tend to be fairly rare these days. Arbiters have relatively little to do, which is why I don't do it more often, just supporting the local events.

It's true, also in Italy the 95% of the players are very sporting persons, then unfortunately you find players that are unable to lose, or that are very attached to the money, and that in either case create big problems.

So I return to the question: what prompted Alessandro Biancotti to watch your game? Is he a club-mate of Luca Albertini? I am not suggesting any impropriety, merely trying to ascertain why he didn't look at a more interesting position or one requiring his "professional" attention.

No, he definitely isn't a clubmate of Albertini, Biancotti lives near Turin, Albertini lives near Rome. It has to be said that we were playing move 49th, and the majority of the games were already over.

[Stewart Reuben]

John Cox >A: While reaching out to play a move, a player clearly knocks piece A over accidentally on the chessboard, and then picks it up and replaces it, with no ‘I adjust’, before moving piece B. Is he compelled to move piece A?

B: While reaching out to play a move a player clearly picks up the wrong piece and attempts to execute the move with it (several examples given but let’s stick with Kots’ innovation of 3…Rb4?!? in the Nimzo-Indian). Is he compelled to move the mistakenly touched piece?<
These questions were directed at me some pages back. I have only just come on them.

Answer to A. No, but the player runs the risk that an arbiter might rule he has to move it.

Answer to B. 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Rb4. He could have intended to play 3...Rg8. He realises that this is not best and plays Rb4 in order to disguise his error. The arbiter is entitled to rule that he must play 3...Rg8. The rook is quite a long way from the bishop. Another arbiter might rule that it was an accident with no intent of moving the rook.

If the rules were all cut and dried, there would be no need for arbiters.

Turn your attention for the moment to calling a flag fall. The Laws are clear. If the arbiter sees a flag fall leading to a loss on time, then the arbiter MUST call it. I have long argued against that, particularly so in 1996. I would prefer it to be more like the US Rule that only the player calls flag fall. The current thrust of the Laws is that the arbiter must intervene if he sees a transgression of the Laws. His job is to uphold them. Thus, if an arbiter sees a violation of the touch move rule, he must intervene.

Returning to the Italian incident. It seems to me the Biancotti may have been doing his job rather well. He perhaps knew that there was a measure of bad blood between the two players and also that Albertini could be difficult. So he observed the game closely.

[Stewart Reuben]

I fear boring you, if you have heard it before, with this little anecdote about a game in the Hungarian Championship. It proceeded
1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 Bb5+ Qd7 4 Bf1 Qd8 5 Bb5+ Bd7 ....
Black had touched his queen. The opponent said, 'No that's OK.' The arbiter insisted on the queen move. White would have none of that.
Surely theory would suggest 4 Be2. Thus new opening theory was born.
Of course the arbiter was being over-officious. But in front of spectators it can be quite difficult.

Dr Jana Bellin v Angus Dunnington. Angus was very short od time. Jana played Rd7, pressed her clock and then adjusted the rook to d6. I insisted the rook was on d7. Jana disagreed and Angus said he didn't mind. David Anderton observed all this as did others. I sid, 'Well it's your game,' and walked away.' I was pretty sure that Rd7 was the better move anyway (it would have won). The game was drawn.
I should have given Angus extra time, but the laws didn't refer to this possibility at the time and I didn't think of it. From 2014 you will only be able to adjust pieces while your clock is running.

But what if the game had been played on an electro-sensitive board (such technology didn't exist at the time)? Then people all over the world would have known Rd7 had been played.

[Martin Benjamin]

I referred this to the Decision Review System. There was no "Hot Spot" on the king, but Snickometer and audio suggested a slight brush with Giulio's hand. Hawkeye reckons Giulio's hand would have gone on to pick up the bishop.

DRS verdict: "Checkmate".

(Mi dispiace, Giulio, ho un stranso senso di umorismo; spero che sei tifoso di "cricket" - si dice "grillo"? - hai mai sentito parlare di "DRS"?)

[John Foley]

The laws of chess explicitly refer to whether the touching was deliberate or not. Surely chess is one place where the laws of probability can be applied. The question can be posed as an inverse probability: given that a piece was touched, how likely is it that the touching was deliberate? The way to answer inverse probability questions has been known for 250 years. Is there any reason that the Bayesian approach should not be applied here?

[E Michael White]

Is there any reason that the Bayesian approach should not be applied here?

A Naïve Bayesian Classifier will almost certainly be ineffective. The theory on this sort of thing has been spurred on, by the need for spam identification, in the last 5-10 years and multi-phase selection is the order of the day.

To me the word deliberately means “after due deliberations” and the amount of deliberation required before moving is different from that required when adjusting a piece without the intention of moving it. This is enough to make the application of the FIDE rule difficult and the rule less effective than it was.

[Giulio Simeone]

I referred this to the Decision Review System. There was no "Hot Spot" on the king, but Snickometer and audio suggested a slight brush with Giulio's hand. Hawkeye reckons Giulio's hand would have gone on to pick up the bishop.

DRS verdict: "Checkmate".

(Mi dispiace, Giulio, ho un stranso senso di umorismo; spero che sei tifoso di "cricket" - si dice "grillo"? - hai mai sentito parlare di "DRS"?)

Ha-ha, Martin, you speak good Italian, but I don't know absolutely nothing about cricket!! Is there an audio and video-based system that reviews the arbiters' decisions?

By the way, yes, "cricket" (the animal) in Italian is "grillo", like the comician who recently entered in politics

[Giulio Simeone]

I still haven't replied to some posts and questions:

I find this tale interesting in a couple of respects.

One is with regard to the (un)reliability both of memory and of eyewitness reports. (In saying this I offer no opinion on the veracity or otherwise of Signor Simeone’s account).

Turning to the particular incident, it seems to me that given the relative position of the king and the bishop (and their relative sizes) it is quite likely that the king would be brushed (or even knocked over) whilst attempting to move the bishop. The situation could be exacerbated by things like the height and size of the table, whether the player was left or right handed, the position of the clock and so on. This would be a relatively common event, and it may hence be difficult for the player to remember precisely what happened.

One of the merits of chess is that there is normally no difference between concept and execution – if you want to play Qh5?? then you can play it. This allows players of all abilities and of all disabilities to play on an equal basis. However, now we appear to have the idea that one has to be sufficiently dextrous to play the move you intended. Whilst there may be good reason for this (and presumably there are good reasons for “touch and move” and the law about your move standing when you take your hand of the piece) it does seem like a retrograde step.

Hopefully such incidents as the one described continue to be exceptional, but I fear that Signor Simeone was khawajaed.

You made many sharp observations. It's true, it happens quite often that, while moving a piece, other pieces are brushed and possibly displaced. Since I have a disability, to me it probably happens more often than to the average player. Until my opponent's regretful claim, I considered brushing-displacing-restoring pieces an absolutely ordinary act, that's why I don't even remember what happened before I moved the bishop to f4. I would have been unpolite, at most, if I had moved the bishop, pressed the clock, and then adjusted the displaced king, as some players do. My opponent made a claim on an adjustment that I made in order not to mess things up on the board, it's difficult to think about a more unsporting and miserable behaviour. A good arbiter would have sanctioned him, not me.

So Alistair, I'm afraid you are right - Signor Simeone was khawajaed (I didn't know this word, it's another expression that belongs to cricket? )

[Giulio Simeone]

Hi Eric.

I advised he just let it go. It obviously got to him and he should learn from that.
Even after the arbiter instructed him to move the King he has a walk in the park win.

1...Kd3 2.Kxf3 b5

8/4B3/p5p1/1p6/1P6/P2kbK2/8/8 w - - 0 1

The whole incident screwed him up and he blew it.
Next time an incident happens he can relate to this matter and recall how it affected his play.
It's called learning through experience.

Geoff, I agree that by playing ...b5 immediately I still had a simple win, that I shouldn't have let my brain "go haywire" (another new expression that I learned!) and that this can be a lesson for future experience. But that doesn't justify my opponent behaviour - I think you will agree with that. This player behaved unsportingly many and many times in the past, if arbiters had sanctioned him since the first time he behaved like that, surely now we wouldn't be discussing that very sad episode.

The more he goes on about it, the more chance a future opponent will see it
and try an off-putting stunt knowing this lad's thinking goes haywire if a dispute arises.

Do you think so? I don't think that any player who has read about all the shame I put on my opponent after this incident, will ever dare to cheat me at chess!!