I thought I start a thread with actual (NOT hypothetical) decisions, how they were handled, and how they might have been better handled.
I expect that many of the postings will deal with decisions that were appealed (sometimes multiple times). I also anticipate that some of the people posting will include in their post what they could have done to better resolve the situations, and see no reason for a person posting to be lambasted for not doing what 20/20 hindsight indicates should be done. I can kick this off with three of my own decisions which I felt could have been handled better.
In the final (fourth) round of the middle school section of a local scholastic tournament (about 60 players in the section - accelerated pairings were used) there was a dispute on board 1. The winner of that game would be the individual champion and his team would be the team champion.
An upper-middle B-player was paired against a low C-player. The B-player had a somewhat better position with a queen on c2 defending against mate on g2. The B-player went to play Qxc7 to win an unguarded pawn and then played the queen to another square on the second rank instead. The C-player said to the B-player that he had to take the c7 pawn that he had touched and the B-player responded “it’s not touch-take”. At that point a TD was called over.
The players on board 2 did not actually see the move, but they both agreed that the B-player made that comment. The regular floor TDs did not feel comfortable making a ruling and called me over (Sr. TD floor chief). Each player was a teammate of one of the players on board 1, so were not unbiased witnesses, but since their bias was in opposite directions and they still agreed, I considered it equivalent to unbiased testimony.
I asked the B-player what he meant by the comment (other than trying to say that he didn’t have to capture a piece that he had touched), and he couldn’t say anything. I explained the touch-move rule in full to the B-player and required the capture, which allowed mate in one.
After the game the B-player discussed the situation with his father and they went to the chief TD (NTD) and said that the comment meant that the B-player didn’t actually touch the piece and thus didn’t have to take it. The chief TD reversed my ruling (in the absence of an eye-witness and with the ear-witness testimony having multiple interpretations) and said that the game should continue with the queen move on the second rank.
The C-player appealed the chief TD’s decision and it went to an appeals committee that listened to the reasons for the initial ruling and its reversal and interviewed the four players on boards 1 and 2. The committee (3 long-time coaches with teams in other sections and not involved with the players or the affected trophies) ended up reinstating the floor ruling, feeling quite confident (>99%) that the c7 pawn actually had been touched. The awards ceremony was delayed about half an hour while this went on.
I think the following steps could have been taken to avoid problems or to expedite the resolution of the situation.
I should have worked harder in getting the B-player to actually state what was meant by the comment. That may have prevented the grounds for the first appeal.
I should have emphasized that if the B-player did not agree with my ruling then he could appeal to the chief TD at that time. That would have reduced the lag time in resolving the situation.
This is a good example of a situation where a decision could be “reserved”. I would have made the touch move decision (allowing the game to end in mate in one) and then assumed an appeal by the B-player so that the game would immediately be played out with the other queen move and the original mate in one would stand in the event my decision was not overturned.
In that case if the appeals committee had agreed with the chief TD then we would not have had to wait for the game to be restored to the position and then completed before finding the final result of the tournament. Also, there would not have been the danger of a player’s coach analyzing the position with the player in what would have ended up being the middle of the game.
In the middle school section of the State Championship (186 players in the section and 7 rounds) there was a player that played what he thought was checkmate, said “checkmate” and extended his hand. His opponent reflexively shook the hand in silence while looking at the board and playing the move that captured the checking piece, which left the checking player at a significant material deficit.
The checking player claimed that the opponent resigned by shaking his hand. The floor chief (NTD) ruled that the checkmate was invalid, the handshake was not a resignation, and that the game should continue. That ruling was appealed to me as chief TD (ANTD) and I upheld it saying that the only word spoken (“checkmate”) was erroneous and thus irrelevant, and that the handshake in otherwise silence was ambiguous as it could refer to a drawn game or a resignation by either player. After talking with the players I also stated that I agreed with the floor chief that the initial claim was an honest mistake rather than an attempt to deceive the opponent (and I still believe that).
My ruling was appealed and the appeals committee (1 Sr. TD, 1 LTD, 1 non-TD master) ruled 2-1 (the Sr. TD dissenting) that the handshake was a resignation and the checking player had thus won the game.
That ruling was appealed to the USCF (with the $25 appeals good-faith deposit), and the USCF reviewers were quite perturbed to realize that the rules as then written allowed 1 non-TD and 1 LTD to overrule a Sr.TD, an ANTD, AND an NTD. They restored the original floor ruling.
This was one of the incidents that helped cause the current version of the rulebook to say that an appeals committee should include on it TDs at least as experienced as the TD being appealed, and that a special referee is preferable if that cannot be done.
In retrospect, I should have skipped the appeals committee and just gone with calling a special referee. The rulebook now emphasizes that.
An an NTD I was directing an adult tournament (130-150 players) at a site that allowed each game to have its own small table so that players did not have to sit right next to each other.
One player arrived late (about 20 minutes into the final round of the day) at one of the middle boards and the player’s opponent was sitting waiting for him (without a clock). The late arriving player had a clock and came to me to determine how to set it.
I went to the board and split the elapsed time, showing both players the time and asking if the understood what I was doing. The late arriving player said yes and the sitting player nodded his head, so I placed the clock and didn’t worry about it.
Some time after the game (around midnight) the player came to see me along with another person. At that time I discovered that: the player spoke only Russian and the other person was his interpreter who hadn’t been there earlier; what I thought was a nod in response to my question had actually been a random head movement; the Russian-speaking player had lost on time in mutual time pressure; and there actually had been a clock on the game for a few minutes (borrowed from another player) but that clock had been taken away when that other player finished his game very quickly some time before the late player arrived.
I explained to the interpreter why I had set the clock the way I had and, while I apologized for not realizing that the sitting player did not speak English, I said the ruling was correct and I had no reason to change it.
The interpreter appealed my ruling, so I called a western special referee that I wouldn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night, and who confirmed that my ruling was correct.
I let the interpreter know that the special referee’s decision could be appealed in writing to the USCF, but that the ruling would stand for duration of the weekend tournament. After mulling on it overnight the interpreter and player opted not to appeal the special referee’s decision.
I decided that in the future I would not depend on a simple nod to indicate agreement/understanding, but would actually wait for a verbal response to my question to make sure that the player understands what ruling is being made and why.
p.s. As it turned out the player did enjoy the rest of the tournament once he realized that I was not making a biased ruling.
I’m a little puzzled as to what redress the appealing player wanted. A half point? A full point? Replay of the game? Replay of the game from an arbitrary position? Leaving aside the fact that the TD was correct in his ruling, the latter two are obviously out of the question, and the first two are grossly disproportionate for the loss of ten minutes.
The appealing player was actually looking for either a half point or a full point and, as I stated, I saw no grounds for making any changes to my ruling.
My main reason for posting this situation is that the appeal would have been totally avoided if I had known that, because the player could not understand my the language my explanation was in, he did not realize why I was setting the clock that way. I made an assumption based on his nodding head that he understood me, and I wanted to mention this so that other TDs would be less likely to make the same error.
My decision to try to defuse the situation by having a higher authority bless my decision led to my calling the special referee. That decision to call about a clear ruling may have questionable, but it did have the defusing result that I anticipated it would, it was relatively soon after the use of the special referee had been listed as preferable to an appeals committee, and I was a little unsure of myself in my first adult tournament after passing the NTD test.
OK, here’s one from me, although a bit less important (and less potentially aggravating) than your three cases.
Several years ago I was the floor TD for the WBCA Blitz event held in conjunction with the National Open in Las Vegas.
One of the players made an illegal move and pressed the clock. His opponent stopped the clocks, and asked that I add two minutes to his time to penalize the illegal move.
Under WBCA rules, the penalty for an illegal move (if the clock is pressed) is loss of the game, not two minutes added to the opponent’s time. I felt, however, that the claimant should have requested this ruling if he wanted it. I didn’t feel it appropriate to award him the game, nor even to remind him, “you know, you can claim a win right now if you want to”. So I gave him the two minutes as requested.
I don’t know whether the player who moved illegally knew he was getting away with something, or if he too was confused about the rule.
The possibility that bothered me was this: What if, several moves later, the shoe was on the other foot, and the OTHER player made an illegal move, and his opponent now claimed the win? That could have been a sticky wicket.
Here was my situation last Saturday:
It was a game/40 scholastic tournament. Player A has less than 1 minute left and player B has 20 minutes left. The clock is set to five second delay. Player A makes a move and hits their clock. Player B hits their clock without making a move. Player A responds within the delay and hits their clock saying that Player B didn’t move. Is this an illegal move such that Player A should get 2 minutes added to their clock? Player B claimed that there was no damage since Player A hit the clock before the delay had run out.
In the end I did not add the time to Player A but they won anyway. If I have the same situation again I think I would add the time because it is unfair to someone in time trouble to distract them by hitting the clock before moving.
What is the correct ruling here. The rulebook doesn’t mention anything about hitting the clock without moving.
Thanks,
Mike Regan
The null move is illegal (or otherwise I’ll never be in Zugswang). It violates rule 7A. In those cases, I have always added 2 minutes. Player A shouldn’t be penalized in this case simply because he reacted fast enough to avoid losing any time when Player B ‘moved’ illegally.
A couple months ago, 2 players called for the TD in a game 90 that was intensely played.
The clock was paused.
Player A, a very honorable Asian gentleman of grandfatherly age claimed that Player B made an illegal move. I believe it was something like B’s King being move 2 squares to get out of check (not castling). Player B was a young man from out of state, whom we did not know. In fact, I had beaten the young man in Round 1. Neither had been recording the last dozen moves. What a quagmire of reconstruction. Worse, young player B would sometimes mumble about the uncertainty of the positions as they progressed. It was slightly disturbing to the other tables.
I'm not an experienced TD, but I've got the club level card. Here's what I admired about the way our TD handled the dispute. He calmly took the players and their board into the other room, and carefully and methodically reconstructed the game to the best of his ability, quietly going over it blow by blow. After about 20 minutes, the younger player was finally moved to concede, on the basis of his obvious uncertainty of the position. It was the calm air of our TD that truly impressed me. You know how these things can go!
Another thing that struck me, is that one really never knows for sure, if a player today is on a medication that might affect perception and judgement. It might be a factor also.
I've very much enjoyed reading these, and look forward to more.
