I hear the following statement (copied from above) argued for, but to my reasoning it suffers an direct flaw:
“Mate on the board that has been determined (stale or check) is the one case where the move is completed without hitting the clock.”
I guess this is rule 13A1 in the USCF Rulebook 5th edition.
I would like to understand the flaw in my reasoning, and I am hoping that an experience TD can reply to point it out to me.
Suppose:
Game has completed its first 31 move-pairs, and the current segment of the time control ends after move-pair 40.
The button press counter, or the misnomered “move counter”, in this case does match the actual move-pair by displaying “32” (32 being the current move-pair).
Black has only 1 second remaining.
White has 15 minutes remaining, and White’s clock is ticking.
White makes a blunderous move, giving Black a mate-in-1 opportunity. White punches White’s clock.
Black quickly begins his hand toward his knight to deliver mate, but before Black touches his knight he realizes it is pinned, and that instead he must deliver mate with his queen. Black’s hand quickly shifts toward his queen. Unfortunately for Black, the moment Black touches his queen Black’s flag falls, before Black has time to move his queen to the mating square.
Nevertheless Black quickly moves the queen to the mating square anyway, and announces victory by saying “Checkmate!”.
White yells - “No way, because your flag fell before you placed your queen on the mating square!”.
Black yells back - "No, my queen reached the mating square before my flag fell. And by the dubious rules of the USCF I am not obligated to prove my claim by punching my clock to validate the checkmate; so I win!
White angrily calls over the TD. After considering the competing claims, and noting the button press counter accurately matches the actual move-pair count, the TD decides that Black won by checkmate. The TD has helped Black cheat White out of White’s deserved victory. White curses the USCF rule for its apparent flaw, and demands a justification for the rule from the TD. The TD replies lamely saying only that - “Checkmate ends the game”.
Question: Why is White wrong to believe that the USCF rule would be better if the rule demanded that Black press Black’s clock after moving Black’s queen onto the mating square, to prove Black had not first suffered flag fall?
5th edition (2003) quotation:
13A1: The clock after checkmate.
“A player who checkmates the opponent is not obligated to then press (5H) or stop (5I) the clock, as checkmate takes priority over a subsequent flag fall. A player delivering checkmate may choose to press the clock to minimize the possibility of dispute. See also 9E, Checkmate or stalemate.”
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The trouble is the order of events. For White’s claim to be valid, it should be:
Black quickly begins his hand toward his knight to deliver mate, but before Black touches his knight he realizes it is pinned, and that instead he must deliver mate with his queen. Black’s hand quickly shifts toward his queen. Unfortunately for Black, the moment Black touches his queen Black’s flag falls, before Black has time to move his queen to the mating square.
White yells - “Time!”.
Nevertheless Black quickly moves the queen to the mating square anyway, and announces victory by saying “Checkmate!”
White angrily calls over the TD. The TD heard White yell “Time!” before he heard Black say “Checkmate!” and players who were sitting nearby confirm that they saw Black moving his queen after White yelled “Time!” so the TD decides that White won on time.
The difference between these two scenarios is that in the second, White did what he should have done, while in the first, he didn’t. White has an obligation, if he sees that Black is running very short on time, to watch the clock and call the flag fall as soon as it happens. If he doesn’t, the TD will have no evidence that the flag fell before the checkmate occurred.
Considering how many people seem to be annoyed by the mere thought that someone might set a clock to beep on flag fall, I don’t think people yelling “Time!” loud enough to make sure that a TD hears is going to go over well.
Balderdash. A player is permitted to assertively and definitively claim a win. In the situation described, the player must absolutely assertively and definitively claim a win.
13C6 does take into account verbally making the claim before stopping the clock, so I’d consider just the wording to be enough to trigger a valid time forfeit claim. Failing to stop the clock in time might result in a double-flag draw.
There is also the possibility that black played the checkmate quietly (to avoid disturbing the other players) and then reached for the clock while the flag was up and the clock flagged just before it was stopped. In that case a soundless checkmate, followed by FLAG, followed by CHECKMATE sounds the same with the checkmate coming before the shout as it would have with checkmate coming after the shout.
These are examples that make a TD’s life “interesting”.
Yes under the current rules White does have that obligation. My point in starting this thread is that there is no good reason to burden White with this obligation. It would be better to remove the rule that makes a checkmate move more of a special case than it has any need to be, and require that Black complete his turn to achieve a legal checkmate (in games where a chess clock is used).
And yes I failed to include a step where White stares at Black’s clock and then hurriedly says aloud “Your flag fell, therefore I win”, hurrying before Black might suddenly move his piece for checkmate. Again it is bad and entirely unnecessary to compel White to play this racing game. And it is bad to motivate White to stare at Black’s ticking clock, because it is a distraction from the board and a tedious bother.
The current special-case rule offers no answer to the predictable problem that - White and Black will likely disagree on whether White shouted “Flag fall” before vs after Black moved his piece to create a checkmate position. This is another problem that would be solved by eliminating the special-case rule for the checkmate move.
So far I have not seen any statement of any benefit to the special-case rule. I have tentatively concluded there is no benefit, and that the rule is there on the flimsy idea that - Checkmate is a regal move that we merely enjoy honoring with a special-case rule.
But if there is a real benefit, I would be grateful to anyone who can state it here.
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So that after checkmate, the checkmated player doesn’t sit there for an hour waiting for his opponent’s flag to fall after his opponent didn’t hit his clock when the checkmate was acknowledged and he then left to mark up the result.
Yes, the present special-case rule creates this risk. As flag fall and checkmate both approach in a frantic final two seconds, nobody can say with certainty what happened with 13A1 in effect. 13A1 even admits this with its mention of “dispute”. 13A1 also uses the word “subsequent” in a way there merely begs the question.
I suspect that 13A1 survives only because this dispute rarely arises in tournament games; not because 13A1 handles these rare occurrences well and to the satisfaction of White, Black, and the TD.
In games played on websites like Chess.com, each move automatically presses the player’s clock. In effect, 13A1 is dismissed from Chess.com games.
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While the argument against the special case is not entirely without merit, it does seem silly to allow something (flag fall) that happens after the game is over to decide the result. So, I say, leave the rule as is.
Note, too, that 13A3 spells out what to do if it is unclear which came first, the mate or the flag: “13A3. Unclear if checkmate or flag fall came first. After considering all available evidence, … a director who is still unable to decide [ which came first ] shall deny the time claim and rule the checkmate valid.”
Why is White wrong to believe that the USCF rule would be better if the rule demanded that Black press Black’s clock after moving Black’s queen onto the mating square, to prove Black had not first suffered flag fall?