Confusing FIDE Laws

[Roger de Coverly]

What the USCF rules also say is that a player is allowed to claim his own flag has fallen to prevent his opponent completing their scoresheet and claiming the win on time.

I've long thought that completely nuts. The long standing British and I assume international convention is that you move to another board and reconstruct the game. I think I've only needed to do this once and that was around forty years ago, when my sheet said 40 and my opponent's 38 and that's dispute resolution. I don't think the convention that the player with the completed sheet lends it to the player with the incomplete sheet causes any difficulty, particularly if they fill it in using their own time.

Perhaps it's not playing in competitions where there's adjournment or adjudication, but I find it quite rare to see players get so short of time that they cannot keep score or at least know the move count in the run up to an intermediate time control.

[Roger de Coverly]

Let's also insist that in congresses they supply the extra queens by the start of the game on each board.

It depends on the Congress, but several do. The 4NCL as well.

If the sets come in bags, the bags can double up as a home for mobile phones. There's one for arbiters to chew on. Is the box containing the sets also a bag? If so it's the easy solution for evening league games, that the box is left on the table to contain the phone instead of being tidied away until the end of the match.

[Nick Grey]

Seems in lower divisions a few queens but not two per board. Quite honestly would like mobiles off & visible rather than arbiters/captains following players to the toilets. I have not played a game with upturned rooks for 20 years. Trouble is ensuring a set goes back into each bag or box. Ensuring there is a visible clock in the room.

Congress players ought to help organisers at the end of a congress. If get there early help set up too. Same with players in leagues.

[Ian Thompson]

the laws say nothing about how pieces should be placed on the squares. Indeed it can never be deemed incorrect to place a rook upside-down according to these laws. Therefore an upturned rook can never be "corrected" by an arbiter who needs to pretend he knows nothing about that a promoted rook turned upside-down is not a rook, while the rest of the world (including the players) assume that it is really a queen.

Change the design of rooks to something like this -

Pointed Rook.JPG

That would deal with upside down rooks once and for all. It'd be a nice little business for somebody to modify all existing rooks to add a pointy bit on top.

[Jesper Norgaard]

...

About the upside down rook. One argument was that a decanter is still a decanter upside down. I have seen children use two pawns to represent a promoted queen. Clearly in tournaments where some boards are electronic, it is ESSENTIAL not to use an usdr. Jesper you have created 6 articles about this minor matter. We try to be consise.

Point taken. Perhaps the only bare-bone essential is to point out that

"Placing a rook on its head instead of its base is incorrect, and the arbiter should intervene to correct it"

I am very open to suggestions how to improve the formulation. The main point is that the laws are not currently saying that it is incorrect to place a rook on its head. How the correction is handled can be viewed as the discretion of the arbiter.

[Stewart Reuben]

Roger >One choice would have been to suggest or insist to DGT that they program the rooks, so that when upside down they appear as queens. <
DGT solve the problem of course by supplying an extra quen of each colour.

Ian. I did ask Carol Jarecki what happened in a USCF, now non-FIDE Rated, game if neither player kept score. What would prevent the game continuing indefinitely, at least in delay mode? She had never considered there to be a problem.

[Ian Thompson]

Point taken. Perhaps the only bare-bone essential is to point out that

"Placing a rook on its head instead of its base is incorrect, and the arbiter should intervene to correct it"

I am very open to suggestions how to improve the formulation. The main point is that the laws are not currently saying that it is incorrect to place a rook on its head. How the correction is handled can be viewed as the discretion of the arbiter.

Sufficient, in my view, would be to add a definition of "displaced" in the "Glossary of terms in the Laws of Chess" which would then apply to Law 7.4.

Something like "displaced: 7.4. A piece is displaced if it is not on its base and wholly within its correct square on the chessboard."

[Gareth T Ellis]

Nick Grey » Sun Mar 06, 2016 2:35 pm

Let's all go back to our suppliers of chess sets & demand our extra queens.

Nick, all the major suppliers of chess sets have been providing extra queens for many years now.

[Brian Towers]

9.6(a) is useful for understanding the FIDE process. We can see the reasoning for this new rule. Increments may mean the game goes on too long. 5 fold ocurrence brings the game into disrepute. But I suggested we give up on it because I couldn't draft the correct English at short notice. Obviously a majority disagreed with me.

Sorry to (continue to) be a bit thick, Stewart, but I'm still a bit confused on this one.

Just a reminder:

9.6 If one or both of the following occur(s) then the game is drawn:
a. the same position has appeared, as in 9.2b, for at least five consecutive alternate moves by each player.

The underlining highlights my area of confusion.
Let me give two sequences which lie at opposite ends of the spectrum:
[FEN "r7/p7/4k3/8/4K3/8/P7/R7 w - -"] 1.Kf4 Kf6 2.Ke4 Ke6 3.Kf4 Kf6 4.Ke4 Ke6 5.Kf4 Kf6 6.Ke4 Ke6 7.Kf4 Kf6 8.Ke4 Ke6
Pretty clear that this satisfies 9.6a. The initial position is repeated 5 times consecutively and all the intermediate positions are repeats. So, both black and white's odd and even moves repeat the position.

[FEN "r7/p7/4k3/8/4K3/8/P7/R7 w - -"] 1.Kf4 Kd6 2.Ke4 Ke6 3.Kd4 Kf6 4.Ke4 Ke6 5.Kf3 Kd7 6.Ke4 Ke6 7.Kd3 Kf7 8.Ke4 Ke6

The question is does this sequence of moves satisfy 9.6a?
Only the even numbered positions with white to move are repeats. They are consecutive and their are 5 of them. Is this enough? Or do we have to have repetitions with Black to move too?

[Nick Grey]

Perhaps some leagues & clubs have not bought sets for a long time. Or bought spare queens. It is infrequent.
Get plenty of arguments on certain leagues & clubs having analogue clocks. And individuals saying non-compliant & not referring to the league rules.

[Stewart Reuben]

Brian. So you agree it is complicated to express.
Every other move they have to arrive back at the same position. At the last meeting some wanted to remove alternate. Some wanted simply 5 times in the game the same position. Takis (chairman of the Arbiters' Commission) quite correctly didn't like that. It is too big a burden on the arbiter. Of course easy enough on a digital board with a programme to flag its occurrence to the arbiter.
Alex Holowczak has been tasked with improving the wording.

[NickFaulks]

Alex Holowczak has been tasked with improving the wording.

By FIDE? Alex is moving up ( or down? ) in the world.

[NickFaulks]

Upside-down rooks: FIDE takes action
Coherent strategy to combat actual cheating - FIDE invisible

Easy to say, and not completely unfair. However, it must be added that FIDE is blurred rather than invisible and that the ECF, which has considerable discretion over the way in which FIDE's regulations on the subject of anti-cheating are applied in its jurisdiction, has to date offered little by way of guidance to leagues and congresses.

I would guess that Alex is minded to become more proactive in this regard. We shall see whether he receives support from members in general and regulars on this forum in particular. It has to be understood that anyone who maintains the right of players to move around the venue in possession of a communications device is saying quite clearly that they do not care about anti-cheating. I'm not saying they're wrong, but they cannot then complain when problems occur because of suspected or alleged cheating.

[David Sedgwick]

It has to be understood that anyone who maintains the right of players to move around the venue in possession of a communications device is saying quite clearly that they do not care about anti-cheating. I'm not saying they're wrong, but they cannot then complain when problems occur because of suspected or alleged cheating.

I don't accept that people don't care about cheating because they don't want to adopt heavy handed so-called "anti cheating" measures.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Upside-down rooks: FIDE takes action
Coherent strategy to combat actual cheating - FIDE invisible

Easy to say

Indeed.

... the ECF, which has considerable discretion over the way in which FIDE's regulations on the subject of anti-cheating are applied in its jurisdiction, has to date offered little by way of guidance to leagues and congresses.

Agreed here too. Last I heard of anything was when a case cropped up circa 2011. That was when I discovered that the ECF had no power to ban anybody. Not aware of anything significant that has happened since then.

However, whatever the ECF do, anti-cheating measures clearly have to be imposed internationally. It would make little difference that the ECF were doing a super-great job if other federations were to, say, just let proven cheats continue playing. Everybody has to do the same thing. Which means FIDE action.

I do realise it’s not an easy issue to solve - and that the reason why everybody leaves it for everybody else is because (a) it’s difficult and (b) nobody wants to get sued.

This is precisely why it’s a problem that FIDE won't step up. Actually the problem is that they can’t.