While I liked and respected the Chief TD, he passed it to the scholastic council, as he didn’t feel that eligibility was his issue. (Since when is prize eligibility not an issue for the TD?) The SC didn’t even seem to understand the issue (they equated showing that something wasn’t a school . It was then passed to the PB, which again maintained the same attitude.
Imagine a “school” which isn’t accredited, approved, chartered, or in any other way recognized by any external entity as a school. Further imagine that the “school” instructors were all relatives of the students (in a year when home schools were not allowed.)
One year I was told that a “school” that had a headmaster from the 15th century channeled through a student’s parent, and that also added a transfer student expert weeks before the tournament when their earlier attempt to put an underage sibling on the team was caught, was a school because they had 8 foot tables in a room set up like a classroom. I pointed out that I had that in my basement, did that make my house a school?
This is why rules need to be clear, and say what they mean, and interpreted in clear language. If the rules don’t say exactly what we intend, then we need to re-write the rule.
This is why I’ve long advocated that the implicit policy we actually use routinely be stated explicitly: A participant in a tournament must, if challenged, be able to demonstrate their eligibility for a prize, or they cannot compete for that prize.
I believe in well-defined, clear rules, because when they aren’t, legitimate confusion, personal bias, and “rules-bending” for advantage takes place. My experience over the past year is that there are rules that need work, TD tests that need work, and TD test instructions that need work.
If you have a reason why my logic regarding the use of scoresheets is incorrect, I’d love to hear it.
No. No rule specifically allows a second scoresheet to be used, whether paper or electronic. The possible use of a second scoresheet is nowhere mentioned in the Rules of Chess. In situations not clearly addressed by the rules the TD has discretion (see rule 1A.)
I don’t have any interest in using a device or two score sheets. Nor do I think I’d like to play in an event where a TD calls players with different ideas than his “anti-social”. The desire to use a second scoresheet when a TD demands the one they provide be used might be time-wasting. It might even be stupid. But it isn’t anti-social.
The general approach of rules in the U.S., including laws (on which rules must ultimately rely) is that which is not prohibited is permissible. If something were to become absurd a judge might impose a reasonable limitation in a court case, but the underlying principle would not be changed.
The TDs and organizers who have argued against the backdoor attempt to get all manner of present and future electronic devices into tournaments, are following successful best practices and standards for their events. If attacks on best practices and the rules are allowed to succeed, then we will have to allow phones in the room, tablets with apps that mimic chess clocks, and computers with flat screens for those who are 3D challenged, along with any other thing someone dreams up. You can forget about being able to police electronic device cheating.
By the way, the unusual view that “that which is not strictly prohibited is permissible” is not one that is standard in the law, in legislation, or even in chess rules. Courts make rulings against that view every day. Organizers have to protect their tournaments from individuals who have little respect for rules and standards, whether it is to cheat or to upset the environment that their clientele expect to play under. It has nothing to do with bias, but in applying practices that have been found effective. Attacking TDS and organizers for doing what they do to for chess is a poor argument.
Ah yes, this is the old slippery slope argument. Sorry it doesn’t work. That’s a nice try, though.
Mike, I was not going after you but the fact that there are some TD’s and organizers that are going against the rules because they personally do not like them.
It is interesting that Brennan Price is saying that people who want to use their electronic devices are anti-social, really wrong but interesting nonetheless.
Brennan, the rules are laid down for the society that constitutes Chess players. So the rules actually work to increase and further social behavior in Chess.
There is a rule that certifies and allows specific electronic score keeping devices to be used in US Chess tournament play. Because it is a rule, this adds the use of an electronic score keeping device to the side of being social.
To go against this rule and stop the use of the legal electronic device is in itself an anti-social action, by definition. But, that’s a nice try on your part even though it is the polar opposite of being right and working.
No again. If the Rules of Chess neither explicitly allow nor explicitly disallow an action the TD has discretion.
Brennan Price has said that he would not allow a second scoresheet under any circumstances. Maret Thorpe has said that she would allow one subject to a complaint from the opponent, and then rule on the merits of the complaint. Both approaches are reasonable, and neither one is clearly wrong. If you want to be sure that a second scoresheet will be allowed you’ll need to get an ADM drafted and passed explicitly allowing it.
Wow. Just about everything you said above was wrong.
First, the statement “If the Rules of Chess neither explicitly allow nor explicitly disallow an action the TD has discretion.” certainly appears incorrect, on two levels.
First, I am unable to find any rule or power that backs this up. Section 21 of the rules doesn’t seem to ascribe this power to a director. The director is given discretion in many ways, but the rules actually say:
I fail to see where the director has the power to make up rules. The director is allowed variations if announced in advance:
But there is no implication that the director has the discretion to create rules on the fly; Variations must be with advance notice, and given that within just this forum more than one player has expressed that he would consider changing his decision to participate, its clearly a major variation.
The director is bound by the rules of chess - not vice versa.
Second - should the director make up a rule in a vacuum that causes a player economic harm, he would certainly have legal liability, all the more so because such discretion doesn’t appear to be spelled out. Further, the director might arguably be in violation of the Standards of Conduct within the Code of Ethics.
Fundamentally this is what is meant by the phrase “we live in a free country”. You may do what is not prohibited. The TD is prohibited - he/she is bound by the rules of chess, and must announce variations in advance.
Minor variations are similar to “house rules” or baseball’s “ground rules.” They are slight changes in the rules based on where one is. The refusal to allow an approved US Chess device is clearly a major variation - since otherwise the approval would be meaningless - there would be no point to approving.
Further, why would Brennan even object to treating it as a major variation? It’s simply good manners if nothing else. As an organization are we so socially inept that we would not tell someone until they arrived that their US Chess approved device can’t be used in the tournament?
With respect to Brennan Price’s approach - without a pre-announcement it’s clearly wrong, as he has no rule to justify such a decision. It’s arguably a violation of the Standards of Conduct. Maret’s approach, based on fact and circumstance is both reasonable and correct.
The tournament director is employed by an organizer. The organizer, for the benefit of the players and his own bottom line, determines the conditions of the tournament. The TDs will follow what the organizer wants. The USCF is not a dictatorial monopoly that demands that every “rule” or guideline be strictly followed. Organizers have considerable leeway in how they conduct their events. After all, the Bylaws state that organizing affiliates are not agents of the USCF.
Ah, the old “it’s a free country argument.” How quaint. You may have political freedom, but any other “freedom” is encased in fine print, has legal limitations, and is not to run over personal freedoms of others. You cannot blindly interfere with the business of other individuals or major corporations without major push back. Your demands are limited by how these businesses, including chess organizers, want to do business. They have a system of doing things that will not be overturned because of your personal whim or petty grievance. You may think that “the customer is always right”, but that has never been true.
The “slippery slope” argument over technology is being heavily debated by futurists, by major international corporations, by government, and by the academic community. The general impacts of technology on jobs, on personal psychology, and on society in general are being studied and have been for decades. We are not being Luddites by any means. We are establishing ground rules and limitations. The simplicity of using a scoresheet rather than a gizmo the looks like a phone, which is generally banned in a tournament setting, seems to be lost on you. Take the score sheet home with you and type or scan it into your device. No one is stopping you from doing that. You have not been harmed. A judge would throw a frivolous case concerning your alleged “rights” out of court with prejudice and make your attorney pay court costs.
Until recently, no one knew this new notation device existed. It is a real surprise that the USCF approved a phone-like device when organizers have been under the impression that it is permissible to ban various electronic devices from venues. The USCF does not have them listed on page 64 of the 2018 Annual Buying Guide. There are a number of scorebooks, score pads, and carbonless scoresheets, but no electronic notation devices. Trying to enforce an alleged “rule” when even the USCF does not have them available is a hard sell for organizers to abide by.
Although an organizer determines a lot, a TD is still required to follow the rules when the organizer doesn’t want to. I had one organizer that had erroneously flagged a number of players as members and then when the tournament submission showed they were not the organizer wanted to strike their games from the tournament report. I told that organizer that I would not sign off on a report like that and finally submitted the report with the organizer paying for the (then availalble) tournament memberships. I did stop blindly trusting the expiration dates in an organizers file after that.
The US Chess rule involved would be 1A which says that the that the rulebook “cannot and should not regulate all situations” and gives the TD the trust to resolve any such situations fairly.
The regulations for the four national scholastic (elementary, JH, HS and K-12) have banned having a phone anywhere other than with a parent/coach or in a bag. A phone cannot be visible and cannot be carried in a pocket.
The argument was that, except as limited, one has the right to do as one pleases. Telling me that there are legal limitations when that was GIVEN says nothing.
No one is running over the personal freedom of others. Except maybe Brennan Price in his approach.
But based on principles that appear to be Luddite-esque.
The simplicity of being able to drag and drop the games into a computer for storage without having to go through the time and steps of re-entering them seems lost on you. Connect a wire, flick a mouse and boom done.
The harm is in lost, duplicative, time. Scanning is not yet efficient as OCR is not sufficiently reliable. Moreover, one would still need to format the moves, remove the excess text of the scoresheet, etc. That seems to be a really bad idea, frankly.
Perhaps. But perhaps he would look instead at the membership/affiliate contractual violations.
Until recently, it didn’t exist.
E-scoresheets have been approved for some time, and one was even based on prior PDA technology. Add cell service to a PDA, and that’s essentially a phone. So I’m not sure why you’re surprised.
But the thing is, with the functions disabled it isn’t a phone-like device. That’s the point. You can’t call on it, there is no cell or data service. WiFi functionality is only open for software updates. No bluetooth. Once the device has seen and used the device, its readily apparent that it isn’t a phone. Either through ignorance or by just being obstinate you continue to mis-characterize it.
In the early days of digital clocks, those weren’t always in the catalog either. Moreover, the way that these are sold, in order to keep prices down, doesn’t make it catalog-friendly.
I have to say, when escoresheets first came out, I thought they were a terrible idea, I thought they were bad for kids (and there is still an argument for that) and I thought they were unnecessary.
Then one day I decided to be open-mind and try them. You know what? I found that they were a good idea, they were useful (albeit a bit expensive) - and I thought they were still bad for kids.
Perhaps you should make yourself use one for a year and then see if you feel the same way.
What you do with your alleged “duplicative” time is irrelevant to my concerns as an organizer. Send me the latest device for free. You can pay the shipping.
People who are thorns in the side and who demand special consideration do not merit positive attention from an organizer. There are plenty of people who are satisfied to follow the rules of the competition. They usually ask if they can take some extra scoresheets home with them.
When am I going to receive my free electronic notation device? Please send it soon, as my birthday is coming up.
Could you please provide the context for this thread? Did you try to enter a tournament that banned electronic scorekeeping devices, then make this secondary scoresheet argument?
This weekend I will play in the USATE. For the past two years, the organizers/TDs have required players to use only the provided scoresheet. Steve Doyle told me this was in response to complaints of suspicious behavior from a handful of players.
The past two years I have been pleasantly surprised not to hear any complaints from players or chess parents. The previous few years there were more than a few MonRois seen in the playing hall, mostly higher-rated young players. I thought when those players were required to use a provided paper scoresheet there might be complaints. Not that I heard.
Anyone who tried your argument about using an electronic device as a backup scorekeeping method would almost certainly be told “no” by the tournament staff, and would also cause unneeded disruption at an event with close to 1,200 players from beginner to GM. Not to mention a new time control this year, that I expect to cause confusion.
Would be like trying to play Qd1-f7 mate to make some sort of statement on uber-parsing the letter of the rules.
I don’t mind if an opponent uses an electronic device, as long as he/she leaves it at the board. I don’t mind if I am required to use a provided scoresheet. It’s just not that big a deal.
Eric, thank you for asking and thank your for a polite discussion. It’s truly appreciated.
A new electronic scorekeeping device came out. It is approved by US Chess. Some TDs don’t like it. I don’t know that they’ve seen it or used it, but they don’t like it. So, as a result they have said that they won’t allow it to be used. They’ve also indicated that they don’t consider that a major variation, so they would not plan on including it as a major variation. The US Chess office has said that not allowing the use of an e-scoresheet is a major variation.
I put all my games in ChessBase. I have spent a few years now working on getting my past games there. I put the new games in when a tournament is complete. An e-scoresheet allows me to do this very quickly compared to a regular scoresheet. I would be very unhappy to show up at a tournament and only after-the fact know that I couldn’t use the device. Generally, the additional investment in time would sway my decision on which tournaments to attend. (Generally speaking, as part of re-organizing so I can play more, so I can be more organized, so chess takes less space in my house, etc., I’ve been working to digitize my game scores, my chess books, etc. I cut my shelf space by 50% when I moved.)
It occurred to me that I have seen situations where a player was recording the game twice - once on the required tournament scoresheet - the official record. Once in their own personal scorebook.
Reading the rules, it appears that’s completely valid. The recording of the game a second time violates no rules, so long as the player doesn’t try to USE the second scoresheet in any official capacity. Additionally, since it violates no prohibitions, it appears that the TD has no ability or discretion to limit this use, UNLESS the player is somehow creating an annoyance.
Consequently, if a TD wished to exclude e-scoresheets, to do so, the TD would need to make it clear in advance, which frankly, seems reasonable to me. Why TDs in this thread are loathe to do that, I can’t answer. Alternatively, the player would have the right to use the device as a secondary, unofficial, scoresheet. For me personally, my enjoyment of the general, generic, tournament would be decreased by not using an scoresheet. I realize not all events will allow that, but its reasonable that as a player the organizer put me in a place to make an informed decision.
Out of curiosity, how is the organizer making players use ONLY the provided scoresheet? The plain reading of the rules requires it to be the on the prescribed scoresheet - but not ONLY on the prescribed scoresheet. See the first post in the thread.
Kevin, in this last post you have done a great job of showing why you want to use an e-scoresheet in the tournaments you play in.
I think, though, that Eric is curious about your motivation for starting this thread.
Is it because of something that happened to you in a tournament you entered?[list][*]Is it because you were not allowed to use an e-scoresheet?
Or is it because you were not allowed to use a second paper scoresheet?
[/:m][]Or is it because of something you believe might happen to you in a future tournament?* Is it because you believe you might not be allowed to use an e-scoresheet?
Or is it because you believe you might not be allowed to use a second paper scoresheet?
[/*:m][/list:u]
Please pardon Eric and me (and others) for our attempts to psychoanalyze you. But we have all seen threads, started by you, that on the surface appear to be based on hypotheticals, but which all of us know very well come from actual negative experiences you have had. A prime example would be the various discussions of home-school teams in scholastic team tournaments.
In this way you are much like GM Walter Browne. I have heard it said that everything in the old WBCA blitz rules is there because of things that had happened to Walter Browne in blitz tournaments.
Inquiring minds want to know, that’s all. It’s human nature. Just answer the above bullet questions, one by one. That would satisfy our curiosity. Maybe.
As far as I know, no one has asked to use a secondary scoresheet or scorekeeping device at USATE. I might ask about it this weekend, but I hear there will be a record turnout, a new time control and a snowstorm, so there might not be much time to bother the staff.
I was surprised when the provided-scoresheet-only policy was implemented two years ago. There are no cash prizes; why would anyone cheat? (I learned the hard way that people will do anything for enough money if they are desperate enough.)
But it seems there were complaints of people cheating, I guess by taking their scorebooks into dark corners or bathrooms, to compare with older games in the scorebook or maybe fire up pocket Fritz and input the current position.
Whatever. I would endorse this policy at the World Open, but it seems overkill at the Amateur anything. Still, there was no rebellion and not even much grumbling that I heard. It’s not like they make you hand in your scoresheet when the game is over.
How much trouble is it to copy the game score into your database? I’ve done it, for my rare non-embarrassing games. Sometimes it’s a good reality check, as you notice things you did not see at the board.
I have played rated chess since 1980, well over 1,000 games, and I do not recall an opponent who kept more than one scoresheet. I don’t think I would complain if an opponent did so, as long as both scoresheets were left at the board at all times.
But taking a few minutes to input the game score to CB seems like less trouble than making a stink about it during a tournament.
