An Arbiter's Notebook 
by Geurt Gijssen

What Shall We Do with a Stinking Player?

Question Article B 0.12 in the newly released FIDE handbook
states "Tournaments that make changes to favour one or more
players (for example by altering the number of rounds) in their
pursuit of titles or ratings will not be accepted." Could you be more
specific on what is forbidden? It is common practice in open
tournaments to make minor changes to the pairings within a point
group to give a player the foreign or titled opponent that he
requires in order to have a chance to fulfill a norm. I have seen (as
a spectator) a case in which a player already has a score sufficient
for a norm, even if he were to lose the last game, but absolutely
needed to play a titled player from another federation in order for
the performance to be valid. The chief arbiter did give the player
what he wanted even if this was a slight violation of the Swiss
pairing rules. Is this still legal? 

Players who are seeking norms are the players that are seen the
most often at the arbiter's table, always asking about their next
round's pairing, complaining loudly when they are paired against
non-FIDE rated players (something that usually happens in the
round in which the accelerated pairings are dropped). I would like
much more specific information on which modifications are
permitted. For example, if only a titled player from another
federation has a score different from the norm-seeking candidate, is
it still acceptable to pair them? Is it legal to have a player play the
same opponent twice (another serious violation of Swiss pairing
rules) if it is the only way to achieve a norm because the number of
foreign players is insufficient. What can be legally done to increase
the probability of having a norm without running the risk of refusal
by the qualification commission? Pierre Denommee (Canada.)

Answer As I understand it, the correct procedure is as follows: An
arbiter sends the results of a Swiss tournament to FIDE and he
informs the FIDE rating officer which pairing scheme was used.
When in doubt - and you clearly described how arbiters can change
pairings to favour players (most of the time players from their own
federation are involved) - the FIDE rating officer will send the
results to a Swiss System expert. If this review leads to the
conclusion that the pairings were not correct, this tournament will
not be rated. I have had organizers putting pressure on me more
than once to make pairings so that it would be possible for their
favourite players to make a norm. I have always refused. By the
way, when I make pairings, I see never names of players or
federations, I see only numbers.

Probably a few exceptions to change the pairings are possible. Let
us say two players from Bolivia are playing in a tournament in
Holland and immediately, in the first round, they have to play
against each other. In this case it is not unrealistic to change the
pairing. You do not travel thousands of miles to play in the first
round against your clubmate.

Sometimes players are forbidden to play against players from
another country for political reasons. If this is announced before
the commencement of the tournament, it is acceptable to change
the pairings.

Question I would like to ask, in view of your being an international
arbiter and Chairman of the Rules Committee, if you can send me
the rules for pairings in Swiss system team tournaments. I have
already contacted my federation and they do not have them. I have
also written to members and arbiters of the Spanish federation, but
have so far I have not received any response. Therefore I ask your
help.

I also have two questions about Buchholz tie-breaks: (1) If
Buchholz tie-breaks are to be applied in a tournament, does one (a)
always use the corrected Buchholz (FIDE standard), or (b) specify
whether corrected Buchholz is used or not? (2) How does one
apply the corrected Buchholz tie-break for the opponents of given
player in situations where that player has (a) received a bye; (b)
played only one game out of several rounds; (c) played less than
half the full number of games, winning some games or winning
none; (d) played more than half the full number of games, winning
some games or winning none; or (e) received a forfeit win because
the opponent did not show up? Juan Luis Rodriguez Arias Logrono
(Spain)

Answer In fact, there exists only one official FIDE approved
regulation for Swiss tournaments for teams: the Swiss pairings for
the Olympiad, which, if you or your federation do not have it, can
find in the FIDE Handbook. By the way, you can find it also on
Internet on the FIDE website - www.fide.com. In principle you
may use your own Buchholz system, but I recommend you the so-
called extended Buchholz system described in the FIDE Handbook.
As you know, the Buchholz score of a team is calculated as the
sum of the scores of all opponents of a team. What about matches
that were not played? They will be considered draws. More
detailed regulations can be found in the FIDE Handbook in an
appendix of the Tournament Rules.

Question Dear Mr Gijssen I read with interest your discussion
about the en passant rule and stalemate in the context of the
position in the Swiss booklet FIDE Schachregeln 1997 quoted in
your column. For what it is worth, I have no doubt that, in that
position, Black could not claim a draw by stalemate. The answer
depends, not on Article 3.4(d) of the Laws of Chess, but on Article
5.2 regarding what gives rise to stalemate. The relevant part of the
Article says "The game is drawn when the player to move has no
legal move and his king is not in check." That is, if the player has a
legal move there cannot be a draw by stalemate. (There is no
option in chess to "pass" when it is your move!) In the quoted
position, Black clearly has a legal move available to him - the en
passant capture - and so cannot claim stalemate. Clearly, also, in
the game Piket - Topalov, there was a fault in the computer or its
program.

The word "may" in Article 3.4(d) indicates that the en passant
capture is discretionary. In this regard it is the same as any other
capture. That is, in any position in which a player has a legal
capture, en passant or not, available to him, no stalemate occurs. I
mention that to substitute "can" for "may" in Article .4(d) would
not really change things since, in this context, the two words have
the same meaning - see, for example, Chambers 21st Century
Dictionary. I note that the Laws of Chess use both words in much
the same sense in different places and, to be really precise, some
standardisation of usage may be worth considering. Finally, let me
join all those others who have expressed gratitude at the
availability of your views on the laws of chess and related matters
and the consideration of such a wide range of situations that can
arise in the course of a game or a tournament. This is particularly
helpful to people such as myself who act as arbiter in club
tournaments and whose opportunity to have access to expert
opinion is limited. Denis Jessop (Australia)

Answer Thank you for your remarks. As a matter of fact, I had no
doubts that a player had to take en passant if it were the only
possible move in a position. My problem is still the word "may".
For instance, in Dutch it was translated "mag" and this means, he
may do it, if he likes. I agree with you completely that some
standardisation is necessary and I will really try to achieve this
when we make some changes in the Laws of Chess during the next
congress.

Question Dear Mr. Gijssen: I certainly enjoy your interesting
column quite a lot! I would like to ask for your help with the
following: I can understand this can be annoying to you but I have
read with a lot of care and attention your remarks on the "taking the
king" subject but I still cannot understand what the rule is on this. I
mean, I know "taking the king" is not allowed in blitz but does the
player who "takes the king" lose the game or should we only give
him a warning - "the king can not be taken" but nevertheless
declare the game won for the player, who took his opponent's king?
Why has the FIDE Rules Committee not issued a clarifying
statement on this subject ? Thank you for your help. Jorge Esquivel
(Mexico.)

Answer You are correct when you write that I am annoyed, not
because you ask me this question, but due to the fact that there is
still no decision. The situation is somewhat clear: it is forbidden to
take your opponent's king when he leaves his king in check, but
there is still no decision what the punishment should be if a player
does it. I tried to clarify this several times (Elista 1998, Doha
1999), but did not succeed. I will probably have to insist in Istanbul
at the next congress on a clarification of the situation.

Question Dear Geurt Gijssen: More about Article 12 and 13 - "Too
detailed a rule might deprive the arbiter of his freedom of
judgement and thus prevent him from finding the solution to a
problem dictated by fairness, logic and special factors." This is an
important sentence of the Preface of the Laws of Chess. In
principle I am in agreement, but certain paragraphs need to be
looked at in greater detail. Our sport is different from all others in
that a single point/remark can decide a match. It must therefore be
emphasised that a player must not be in verbal contact with anyone
other than officials or the opponent during the match. This was in
the regulations at the recent World Championships: "A player may
talk only to an arbiter or communicate with a steward or with his
opponent as permitted by the Laws of Chess." It would be a great
improvement to get this written into Article 12. Unfortunately,
many arbiters choose not to enforce this rule, thus resulting in
increased chaos and bad discipline from both players and
spectators. Often "Opens" are played where there is not enough
space. It is not unusual for spectators and competitors to wander
about amongst each other. The arbiter has a very difficult job to
officiate properly under these conditions. Its impossible for him to
decide if someone is speaking about the games or just having a
conversation. Moreover, players not involved will be disturbed. My
position is this: Spectators who cannot remain completely quiet -
"holding their tongue"- during the match shall be told to leave. A
player gets his match declared lost after first receiving a warning.
What is your opinion? Mogens Nielsen, IA (Denmark)

Answer I am very happy with your remarks, because I have been
struggling many years to incorporate this into the Laws of Chess,
i.e., that discussions between participants during the game are
forbidden. But I failed completely. I remember quite well what
people told me when I proposed this: In open tournaments, It is
impossible to avoid that players talking to each other, because there
are many players and only a few arbiters. And these colleagues
explained to me that it is very bad to introduce a new article
knowing that it may not have any value. This seems reasonable, but
I still disagree. If the chief arbiter announces in advance that it is
forbidden to talk to other players, it should at least reduce the
conversations.

As a matter of fact, I have the impression that many arbiters do not
like to chase after players who are talking to other players. I myself
remember a case during the Donner Memorial in Amsterdam 1995.
I saw some grandmasters talking with each other. I went to them
and told them to stop it. The father of a young American boy, who
was participating in the open tournament, came to me and told me
that he wanted to give me a medal, because it was the first time in
his life that he had seen an arbiter who stopped players from
talking.

One quite well known arbiter told me that he and many arbiters
from his federation are against my proposal, because it would
completely change the character of the tournaments in his country.
Everybody may talk to other people when they like and he prefers
to keep it like this. And unfortunately, the majority of the Rules
Committee has accepted his view.

In the FIDE Handbook there is a chapter about regulations of a
tournament, called Tournament Rules. In this chapter you can find
guidelines how to invite players, how to organise the drawing of
lots, the role of the team captain,the conduct of players, the duties
of the chief arbiter, etc. There was a compromise: put this Article
in this chapter of the FIDE Handbook and apply it only in high-
level tournaments. This may mean that we will have different
regulations for different tournaments. I do not like it and I still have
the opinion it belongs in the Laws of Chess. You understand, of
course, that I was not unhappy when I was invited to propose the
regulations for the World Champion Knock-Out Tournament and I
was even happier when they were accepted.

Question With regard to the 50-move rule: Does a tournament
organiser/arbiter have the freedom to suspend the 50-move rule if
they wish and to substitute a practical alternative set of rules? For
example, admittedly an extreme one, suppose a computer-
computer tournament involved only computers with proven
capability to use the available 3-to-6-man endgame tables.
Potentially, there could be theoretically won (and therefore won-in-
practice) endgames with phases of up to 243 moves. Moreover,
these could be played out at lightning speed. Computers would find
these positions in their forward-search trees and steer towards them
unless they were programmed to avoid wins deeper than 50-moves-
per-phase. If arbiters have been given the freedom, under FIDE
rules, to declare under certain circumstances that games are drawn,
might they not also be given in the future the freedom to declare
that a position, though a deep-win beyond the 50-move limit, is
winnable and that the attacking player is 'clearly' capable of
winning it. The word 'clearly' indicates that players must prove
their capability to win deep endings before the tournament starts.
Some benchmark of efficacy could easily be established based on
the use of endgame tables. Although there is a danger of creating
one set of laws for the "have endgame tables" players and another
set for the "do not have endgame tables" players, in practice today,
endgame tables are the only way of establishing effectiveness in
deep endgames. Guy Haworth (UK)

Answer If an organiser or arbiter likes to make his own rules or
Laws of Chess, he may do so. There is only one thing he has to
keep in mindif such a rule or Law conflicts with the current Laws
of Chess, this tournament cannot be rated, cannot be considered as
a title tournament; it means that norms cannot be achieved. And
the organiser or arbiter must know that it is very uncomfortable for
players to play under different regulations.

I am very happy that we now have only one rule for endings: the 50
moves rule. John Roycroft, one of the greatest endgame and studies
expert, tried to convince the Rules Committee to extend the
number of moves for some endings. The Rules Committee decided
to stick to 50 moves and emphasised that the Laws of Chess cover
over-the-board play.

Question Dear Mr. Gijssen: Congratulations for your excellent
column. I enjoy reading every issue of An Arbiter's Notebook. I
have two questions for you. First, what shall we do with a
"stinking" player ? Recently, I was the arbiter of an international
tournament in Germany and we had a participant who obviously
hadn't washed himself for at least a week nor had he changed
clothes. It was an offensive smell not only for his opponent but
also very unpleasant for the players on the surrounding boards. Can
I treat this as a violation of Art.12.1? He was told to wash himself
before the next round (which was the next day). The smell
decreased somewhat but it still was not such that one would like to
sit near this person. 

Second, imagine the situation where a player has a position which
is most probably drawn (e.g., an ending with knight and pawn vs.
bishop) and has less than two minutes left for the rest of the game.
He claims a draw pursuant to Article 10.2. and when the arbiter
delays his decision, the player plays one, maybe two moves, takes
his time and eventually his flag falls. What would you do? As I
understand Article 10.2, the opponent of the player claiming has to
prove his intention to win the game through moves, but what
happens if he doesn't get any chance to show this? Axel
Eisengraeber-Pabst (Germany)

Answer Well, your question about the stinking player is not so easy
to answer. I understand from my own experience how bad the
smell of some players can be. I have often seen players arriving
before the start of a tournament with a very small bag. And I would
wonder how it is possible to be properly dressed throughout the
tournament. And sometimes the bad smell gets worse from round
to round. To be honest, this does not only apply to players, but also
to some arbiters. And I have to admit, that it is very difficult to
make clear to these people that something is wrong. I have the
same question as you have. Can we use Article 12.1: High
standards of etiquette are expected of the players? And what about
Article 12.5: It is forbidden to distract or annoy the opponent in
any manner whatsoever? I am of the opinion that this problem
must be solved another way, and not with the Laws of Chess in
your hand. It must be done quite discreetly and perhaps not even by
the arbiter, but by the organiser. It is very difficult to prescribe
exactly how to handle it, but if there are situations in which only
very diplomatic people may be able to achieve something, this is
one of them.

About your second question, I would like to say the following:
When the arbiter postpones his decision to declare the game drawn,
the claimant really has to show that his claim is justified. The only
way to show this, is by making moves, not by starting a discussion
with the arbiter. If the player makes only one or two moves, the
arbiter has no ability to develop a well founded opinion about the
position. A flag fall means in this situation that the game is lost. I
see only one problem: it is mentioned in Article 10.2 that a player
may claim a draw if he has less than two minutes left on his clock
before his flag falls. Theoretically, it is possible that a player
claims a draw when he has only one second left on his clock. To
postpone his decision and to continue in the game in his presence
is almost impossible.

Question First let me say that this is a wonderful column to help
explain the rules to people and you are doing a wonderful job! I
believe that one of the biggest problems with chess is that very few
people know the rules and even fewer try to find and read them.
This can lead to a number of real problems like the one at a
tournament in Melborne, Florida. At a recent tournament, I walked
in (at the end of the round) on a huge argument between some
masters. I was not there during the incident, but what I heard from
witnesses was the following: Player A was in a completely losing
position to Player B. (I know that that this does not matter, but
some people were trying to use it to justify the claim.) Then as
Player B was going to push a pawn to the 8th rank and queen (a
completely legal move at the time), Player A jumped up claiming
that somebody watching the game had said "Queen" loudly and
was helping player B. But player B claimed not to have heard
anything. After a bit of arguing the TD came to the conclusion that
they should both get 30 extra seconds to their clocks and that
player B would have to play something else other than queening.
(as a side note: player B's move to promote to a queen would have
almost won on the spot!) So both players agreed at that time to the
tournament director's call and played on. The game then intensified
and at the end both players flags fell with player B having a mate in
3. As the argument increased (and I showed up) all of the witnesses
(about 8 people) said that none of them had heard someone saying
"Queen", except one person. He explained that somebody behind
him had whispered "Queen" in Spanish to himself, making it all
even more interesting. In the end the TD called it a draw due to the
fact that both flags were down. So here are my questions:

(1) I don't understand why the TD gave both players an extra 30
seconds for no "reason at all". Should he have done this? (2) What
about not allowing player B to play the proper queening move. I've
never seen nor heard this before. Was the TD wrong? (3) What
about somebody saying "Queen". It was wrong of the observer to
say anything at all, even under his breath, and the TD should have
found out who it was and kicked them out of the tournament hall!
But if it is in another language can one player claim that there was
somebody helping the other to win?

Again, I was not there when it happened and I'm not a TD, so I was
wondering the rules. Thank you very much! Kevin Kane (USA)

Answer (1) As you wrote, there was a huge discussion between
some players. I guess that some people who were watching the
game took part in the discussion. Article 13.5 says: "The arbiter
may award either players additional time in the event of external
disturbance of the game." An broad interpretation of the Laws of
Chess is acceptable to justify the addition of time by the arbiter.

(2) Without any doubt, the decision of the arbiter not to allow the
player to queen was a wrong decision. A player cannot be punished
for the misconduct of a spectator. This was a decision that I do not
understand. I have already answered your third question. The
player who is interfering in a game by stating what to move must
be removed from the playing hall.

I myself have a question: In what kind of tournament was this
game played? If it was not in a rapid or blitz tournament, the
arbiter's decision was wrong because the first flag fall is in almost
all cases decisive. Only in rapid and blitz games is the game drawn
if both flags are down.

One more thing: At this time I am the organiser of the Dutch
Championships being played in Rotterdam. It is a round-robin
tournament with 12 players. 11 players have qualified to play in
this championship based on the results in the previous
championship, as winners of a qualification tournament or a high
rating.One player always receives a so-called wild card. He may
play because he has made a very good performance in other
tournaments, he is a very promising young player or because of
some other justifiable reason. Some exeamples are Korchnoi, who
played in 1977 in the Dutch championship or Peng who won a
bronze medal on board 1 in the Olympiad in Elista. This year, the
commission responsible for giving this wild card decided to award
it to Grandmaster Genna Sosonko. The Grandmaster decided not to
play and suggested giving the wild card to a computer. The board
of the Dutch Chess Federation liked this proposal and consulted
the players who had already qualified for the championship.
Grandmaster Paul Van der Sterren informed the board immediately
that he would not play against the computer, risking a loss. IM
Manuel Bosboom made it clear that he did not like playing against
the computer. It was not clear what he had in mind. 

In the second round he played the computer. This is the game: Fritz
SSS* (this is the official name of the computer) played white. 1.d4
c6 2.c4 d6 (Bosboom offers a draw, the operator refuses on behalf
of the computer) 3.Nf3 Bg4 4.Nc3 Bosboom resigns! In the sixth
round the game Van der Sterren-Bosboom was scheduled: 1.d4
Nf6 2.Nf3 a6 3.g3 b5 4.Bg2 Bb7 5.a4 Draw. The reader will
understand that the sponsor and the board of the federation were
not very happy with these games. All other games against the
computer until round 8 were played "normally", although
grandmasters van den Doel and Reinderman had announced that
they were very unhappy with Fritz. Personally, I have some
understanding for the players who protested. At the moment the
players agreed to play in the Dutch Championship, no one knew
that a computer would be participating in the tournament. And a
computer playing is a very drastic change in the tournament. On
the other hand, I have to admit there is some very good financial
compensation. Instead of 96,000 Dutch guilders (about $40,000)
the prize fund is now 166,000 Dutch guilders (about $69,000) with
a  first prize of 40,000 Dutch guilders. The computer will not
receive a prize. If the computer shares the first place with a human
player, the human player will be declared champion. If Fritz shares
first place with more than one human player, only the humans  will
engage in a playoff. More about this next month...