Post
by Jesper Norgaard » Mon Apr 16, 2018 10:46 pm
This is the suggestion:
"The game is won by the player who has checkmated his opponent’s king. This immediately ends the game, provided that the last move of each player producing the checkmate position was in accordance with Article 3 and Articles 4.2 – 4.7."
There is a couple of problems with this suggestion. The first is rather technical in nature. Article 3 is the legality of the move, and Articles 4.2-4.7 covers touch-move rules. In reality the checkmating move needs to comply with both, but the move immediately before only needs to comply with legality, not touch-move rules. In fact a player checkmated can now claim that since he had touched another piece first before moving his last move, he should be allowed to change his move to be with the first piece touched, to avoid the checkmate that happened to him. That doesn't feel right.
The other problem is that this needs to cover Rapid and Blitz chess as well. And with the above we have set up the framework to correct the illegal move that preceded the checkmating move. But in A.4.2 it says "If the opponent does not claim and the arbiter
does not intervene, the illegal move shall stand and the game shall continue." So we can't fix the error because only the last move can be fixed.
To me the Article 7.5.1 has always been the pinnacle of correcting all illegal moves. It has never appeared sensible to me to restrict this as it is done in A.4.2, to cover only the last move. This was the reason we have a Blitz game including an illegal move (Carlsen-Inarkiev) which could not be mended even though the problem was obvious to both players about Inarkiev's move, giving a check when he himself was in check, and thus instead of correcting it the arbiters could only offer to continue the game with the illegal move included. It's a disgrace quite frankly.
I think we need to rely on the players to report which illegal moves have been detected, and let the arbiter correct them, even in Blitz and Rapid, no matter how many moves have passed. As long as the two players are honest and accurate in reporting what happened, a solution can be found as outlined in 7.5.1 :"If the position immediately before the irregularity cannot be determined, the game shall continue from the last identifiable position prior to the irregularity." A solution can always be found using this philosophy. Yes it is harder in Blitz, without score sheets. But the consequences of letting illegal moves stand are horrific, we are insisting on staining the history of chess with unplayable games like Carlsen-Inarkiev. It stopped abruptly because Inarkiev refused to continue, but otherwise we could not have played through the game in any program that is checking the moves for legality. That is why they should be corrected. It is a price that is worth to pay, to keep the moves legal.