An Arbiter's Notebook By Geurt Gijssen Again, Article 10 Question Dear Geurt, Because of a draw claim under Appendix D, it has come to my attention that 10.2 does not state that it must be a player's move when he makes a claim. It is irrelevant to the actual claim made as that was in a position that looks clearly lost to me. I can't believe we intended to allow claims when it was the opponent's move. Stewart Reuben (England) Answer Of course, you are completely right. Claims regarding the position on the board are only possible for the player who has the move. We have to correct this during the next congress in Istanbul. For the moment, a reference to the Preface of the Laws of Chess is, in my opinion, sufficient: it should be possible to reach a correct decision by studying analogous situations that are discussed in the Laws. Question Dear Sirs, I am member of the Arbitrage Court of the Swiss Chess Federation. I should be grateful if you could send me documentation about jurisprudence related to the application of the official FIDE Laws of chess. Furthermore do you know a good book on this topic? Guy Sauberli (Switzerland) Answer There is no "official jurisprudence" about the FIDE Laws. As we have the ability to change the Laws every four years (and this year we have again this possibility), we do not need such jurisprudence. When we have new cases or we need an interpretation of the Laws, we change them. But I have to add the following: every year, during the FIDE congress, there are meetings of the Rules Committee. In these meetings, actual situations are discussed and sometimes the Rules Committee takes a decision about how to interpret a Law. These very rare decisions are published in the minutes of the Congress and sent to all federations. Another, but unofficial, way is the Arbiter's Notebook at The Chess Caf‚ - the Chairman of the Rules Committee gives his personal opinion to readers' questions about the Laws of Chess. There exists one book about the Laws of Chess, with explanations of the Laws and some other interesting topics for arbiters: Stewart Reuben: The Chess Organiser's Handbook, published by Cadogan, London and New York. I also like very much FIDE Schachregeln 1997, published by the Swiss Chess Federation. There are a lot of practical examples in this booklet. Question Wooden chessboards come in all sizes with the most popular individual square size ranging from 2 inches to 2 1/2 inches. I was wondering if someone can tell me if there is an official size for the individual board squares, chess piece height and chess piece base diameter. If there is no official size can you tell me about the sizes used in recent or past world championship and/or candidates events? Thanks. David Ridge (UK) Answer There is no official size for the individual board squares and pieces. But in all official FIDE events, we use now chessboards with squares of 5.5 cm x 5.5 cm and the whole board is 52 cm x 52 cm. The height of the King is 9.6 cm. The base diameter of a pawn is 2.75 cm. Question Dear Mr Gijssen, Can you resolve an incident that occurred in a speed game but could also be relevant to a sudden death finish? I am ahead on material but very short of time. I am trying to capture pieces so that my opponent will not have mating material. I touch his last pawn and lift it from the board but my flag falls before I can complete the capture. My argument (disallowed by the arbiter) is that my only legal move, having touched his Pawn, will bring about a drawn position. By analogy with the situation where mate is given before the flag falls, an event on the board has made the clock irrelevant. What is your opinion? Phil Roe (USA) Answer Unfortunately for you, the arbiter made, in my opinion, the correct decision. You may not compare your case with a given checkmate. The Laws say that a checkmate finishes the game immediately and all that happens afterwards is therefore irrelevant. Question Dear Mr. Gijssen, I was deputy arbiter in the "World Cup of Active Chess" in Cap d'Agde (France), one year ago. The players (Karpov, Gelfand, Ivanchuk, Polgar and others) were very nice and correct, and we had no problems. But during a tiebreak (blitz in 5 min.) a strange situation occurred in the game Karpov- Adianto. The game was almost finished and Karpov had only a few seconds on his clock. He found a perpetual check, and Adianto accepted the draw. As Karpov won the first game, this draw meant he qualified. What would happen if a player refuses the draw and continues to play a perpetual check in blitz? In the Laws of Chess, perpetual check doesn't exist and according to blitz rules C5. "Article 10.2 does not apply". The player can move his king, waiting for his opponent's flag to fall. This situation is absurd, maybe it is absurd to play blitz and you must accept that time is more important than the position. My question is simple: Can I punish a player who refuses an obvious draw in blitz? Stephane Escafre (France) Answer No, you cannot punish such a player, because he is not doing anything wrong. First of all, I have to emphasise that in blitz games, the clock plays a more important role than in normal games. But also important is that almost all "normal" Laws are valid in blitz chess. A player can claim a draw on the basis of triple repetition of the position or the 50-move rule. And he does not have to show a scoresheet. The arbiter must check the claim and this is the problem. How to check it? In prestigious tournaments - and I consider the tournament you mentioned a prestigious one - all games are played on computer boards, which register all the moves. In the Amber tournament in Monaco, we even have a crosscheck: all games are recorded on videotape. Every incident (touched piece) can be checked. I agree with you that there is a big problem if you do not have this help. But in general, if you expect this a kind of a problem, try to count at least the number of moves played (50-move rule) or try to write the moves down (triple repetition). Question Dear Mr. Gijssen, I never ceased to be amazed by the imagination of those who want to win at all cost. I have witnessed the following situation: in an ending, white is a pawn up in a theoretically won position but the player has clearly no knowledge of the technique required to win. Black has about 5 minutes left on his clock. The player with the white pieces starts playing a long series of useless moves; he is obviously making no effort to win by normal means. When there are about 2 minutes 30 seconds left on black's clock, the player suddenly launches an attack and black must defend in time pressure. White's tactic has effectively removed half of black's remaining time. White's attempt at a win was reckless and should have failed if met with a perfect defence, but under time pressure black committed a terrible blunder that lost instantly. Black could not made any claim because he had more than 2 minutes left on his when his opponent did not make any effort to win by normal means. I'm concerned because there seems to be no limits: if there were 20 minutes left on black's clock, some unsportsmanlike person might want to play 100 useless moves to reduce the opponent's time to very near two minutes before attacking. This brings us to an interesting question: Article B5 states that "The arbiter shall make a ruling according to Articles 4 and 10, only if requested to do so by one or both players". It can be inferred that in a normal game the arbiter can apply article 10 even without any claim from a player, otherwise there would be no need to forbid the arbiter from doing so in rapid play. According to article 10.2, the player cannot claim unless he has less then 2 minutes on his clock, but does this restriction applies to the arbiter when he decides to apply article 10 in the absence of a claim from one of the player? In other words, could the arbiter, who was standing near the board and saw everything, have decided to stop this game and declared the game drawn? The arbiter wasn't sure if the two minutes limit applies to him, so he let the players play even if he would have declared the game drawn if there would have been less than two minutes left when the sequence of useless moves has been played. If a Fischer clock had been used there would have been no problem because it was an easy task to reply to the useless moves in less then 30 seconds. Black's remaining time would have increased as long as white continued to engage in "dirty tricks". Pierre Denomm‚e (Canada) Answer I can understand that you were not happy when you saw this game, but White did nothing wrong in my opinion. These tactics may not be entirely out of place in chess. It is a pity that you did not attend the meetings of the rules Committee when we made the new Laws of Chess. The main issue was how far the responsibility of the arbiter should go. There were two opinions: the game is the responsibility of the two players only and the arbiter shall not interfere at all - even notifying the players that a flag has fallen is the responsibility of the players in all kind of chess: normal, rapid and blitz chess. The other opinion was that the arbiter should interfere in rapid and blitz chess. After this introduction, you may understand how a compromise was reached. Article 4 (The act of moving the pieces) and Article 10 (Quickplay finish) will be applied in Rapid chess only after a claim from one of the players. Notifying the players about a flag fall is not the responsibility of the arbiter. But I have to add something: in the World Championship Tournament we have different rules. In the tiebreak games (Rapid and Blitz games) we use the normal Laws of chess with only one exception: the players are not obliged to write the moves. It is also very important that for each tiebreak game an arbiter is available. And I must say that this system is perfect. It was my proposal to use the normal Laws of chess in these tiebreak games. The reason is that it should be a shame that the title should go to a player due to the fact that his opponent had not seen that the flag of the player had fallen. By the way, claims based on article 10 were not possible (Fischer modus!) Question Dear Mr. Gijssen I would like to ask you the following: (1) is a suggestion to the Laws and (2) & (3) are problems I hope you can help me with. Melody van den Bergh (South Africa) (1) This was mentioned in a previous article and I feel it worth mentioning again. Article 10.2 does not apply to Blitz games (Appendix C5: "Article 10.2 does not apply."). I have witnessed many blitz games where the player who is totally winning (more material and complete winning position) actually lost on time. Does it make sense that this player must also be protected from losing the game purely on time, as is the case with Rapidplay games where a player (with less than 2 minutes left on his clock and who is winning the game) may claim a draw? Maybe for blitz games the following rule can be applied: "If a player has less than 1 minute left on his clock, he may claim a draw before his flag falls. He shall stop the clocks and summon the arbiter. If the arbiter is satisfied the opponent is making no effort to win the game by normal means, or that it is not possible to win by normal means, then the arbiter shall declare the game drawn. Otherwise the arbiter shall declare the game lost to the player who made the claim". What do you think? The biggest problem with this is: imagine the accusations and insults to an arbiter who declares a game lost while the player actually thinks that he is winning! Answer In your last sentence you mentioned already one of the problems, but there are more. In blitz tournaments there is usually a very strict schedule. The application of Article 10 causes many (sometime) long discussions and I am very afraid that organisers are not able to maintain a proper schedule; this is a practical problem. Furthermore blitz games are very special and the winning chances in one game often switch many times from one to the other one. I think it is quite clear that I am against your suggestion. (2) Article 12.4 reads: "The players are not allowed to leave the 'playing venue' without permission from the arbiter. The playing venue is defined as the playing area, rest rooms, refreshment area, area set aside for smoking and other places as designated by the arbiter. The player having the move is not allowed to leave the playing area without permission of the arbiter." My problem is: What is the playing area? Is it the board, table and chairs or does it include the whole playing hall? Answer The playing area is the area in the playing hall where the boards are situated. Only players, arbiters and stewards are allowed to enter this area. For instance, the spectators' area in the playing hall does not belong to the playing area. (3) What to do in the following situation: Players A and B are about to start their game. Player A informs the arbiter that due to religious reasons, he cannot write the moves or press the clock for the duration of the game. Player B also refuses to press Player A's clock. There is also no one (spectators, helpers, etc.) available who can press Player A's clock for him. Due to the tournament schedule it is also impossible to play the game at some other time. What action must an arbiter take under these circumstances? This actually happened to me once - out of desperation, in order not to disturb the other players and disrupt the tournament schedule, I declared the game drawn. Luckily both players were happy with my decision. But what action should have been taken if both players objected? Answer First of all, I should mention that it is not at all acceptable that the arbiter is informed by a player at the moment the game is about to start. An arbiter must have the possibility to take needed, timely measures. This means in your case, that the arbiter has to do his utmost to find an assistant, but if he is unable to find somebody, the game is forfeited. When you ask me what action the arbiter should take in case he cannot find an assistant, then my answer is very simple: start the clock and see what shall happen. The fact that a player is not allowed to write the moves is covered in the Laws of Chess. Article 8.1 says: "If a player, due to physical or religious reasons, is unable to keep score, an amount of time, decided by the arbiter, shall be deducted from his allotted time at the beginning of the game". That a player is not allowed to press the clock is a new phenomenon. It happened to me for the first time during the Olympiad in Elista 1998. GM Boris Gulko (USA) informed me that he was not allowed to press the clock during some special holy Jewish days. Whenever this happened, I spoke with the captain of the opponent. Almost every time the captain agreed that a Kalmykian boy should press the clock of the player who was not allowed pressing the clock. In one case the opponent's captain refused and I told the American captain, Larry Christiansen, that a reserve player should play instead of Gulko. And this is what happened. Question Sir, For many years now, we have experimented with the "sudden death": Say, 1 hour for each player in the last part of the game. Since now the duration of the game (in time) is strictly limited, why keep the obligation to play a definite number of moves in the first part (say, a time control of 40 moves/2 hours)? Giving instead 3 hours to mate to each player (4 hours at the international level, maybe), would allow them to use more time in a complex middlegame, if they wish, provided they play faster afterwards. Players would enjoy more freedom, including the freedom to err. And making decisions, good or bad, is the core of life, and chess also! Removing intermediate time controls would also make it easier for the arbiter and put an end to disputes about losses on time around the 40th move. I have put this question on a few forums already, and I can't believe this idea has never been tried before. What is your opinion? Richard Sauve (Canada) Answer I am not so sure that your idea is a good one. Let me tell you why. It is my opinion that with a time limit of 3 or even 4 hours for the whole game per player and one session we shall have more problems. It may happen in many games that players shall play very slowly and that in these 3 or 4 hours more or less the same number of moves will be played as in 2 hours. With more time controls, the players are forced to play 40 moves in the first period, again 20 moves in the second period, meaning that we have a guarantee of at least 60 moves at the start of the third period with very probably an endgame position. If we should have only one overall time control, I am sure that the arbiters would have to make decisions about claims with middlegame positions on the board. The simplest solution is still to play the Fischer modus.