The chair of the rules committee says the way to fix the Blitz rule chapter in the US Chess rulebook is to structure it so that it just explains the differences between Regular and Blitz. Therefore, how about the following. Except for adding that scorekeeping is not required in Blitz, it keeps all the current Blitz rules the same. Changing certain Blitz rules is a topic for another discussion.
Philosophical question, Micah. You say “Rules that are unique to blitz that aren’t stated elsewhere in the rulebook are given below”. Are there some rules that ARE stated elsewhere that would be more efficiently included in this list and then removed in the other location?
I like the idea, but –
– the present blitz rules are bad enough so that I think maybe changing them should be done before (or as part of) restructuring, not after. Restructuring first, and changing afterwards, is twice as much work.
Specifically:
A. Can we dispense with the long, lecturing introductory paragraph? Just state the definition of blitz (5 <= mm+ss <=10, combined with mm >= 3) and let it go at that. Also state explicitly (as you do) that scorekeeping is not required in blitz.
B. Making G/5 d/0 the default, rather than G/3 inc/2, is an obsolete idea whose time has long since passed. In this area most blitz events (offered in conjunction with main events) have long been G/3 inc/2.
C. Don’t bother saying that a digital clock is a preferred clock. That’s already true anyway, in all forms of OTB.
D. Don’t deprecate a clock just because it cannot be set to not freeze at end. I have never seen a blitz tournament where it made any difference anyway. Virtually any time a player flags, the other player (or perhaps even the TD) calls it, and on we go.
E. Get rid of (or at least de-emphasize) all the silliness about moving one’s king next to one’s opponent’s king, and about king takes king. In this area I have heard TDs announce, at the start of round 1, that “there are no live kings” (i.e. no king takes king) and the only proper way to claim an illegal move is by simply saying “illegal” and calling the TD. This is much simpler.
That would be a good start.
Bill Smythe
I don’t know. There are some rules unique to blitz given in rules 5C and 5E and that might be the most appropriate place for them.
Bill, I tried doing that but you might remember the rude response I got from someone on the rules committee.
. I like the rewrite I did of the introductory paragraph.
At the end of the day, some people prefer G/5;d0 and some prefer G/3;inc2. Therefore, I don’t think the rulebook should state either (or any other time control) as the “standard” under an official rule. Also, the introductory paragraph already states that G/5;d0 is a typically used blitz time control.
It is necessary to say that for time controls with no increment or delay, an analog is preferred over a digital clock if the digital clock can’t be set to continue to operate normally for the player when the opponent has run out of time. However, I think this rule should be changed so that a digital clock is always preferred over an analog clock since the issues with analog clocks are a problem a lot more often.
I don’t mind deprecating one digital clock to another because it can’t be set to not freeze at end. However, I think a digital clock should always be preferred over an analog clock, even if the digital clock can’t be set to not freeze at end, since the issues with analog clocks are a problem a lot more often.
Other changes to the blitz rules that would be good are: 1) Even after both sides have completed one move, allow the time on the clock to be corrected if it was set incorrectly at the beginning of the game, 2) make what constitutes sufficient mating material the same as regular and quick chess, and 3) disallow castling if the king and queen are incorrectly reversed at the beginning of the game. A player should suffer all the consequences of not having the pieces properly set up at the beginning of the game. This also makes it consistent with the FIDE rule.
Micah, occasionally you can be a little harsh on people you disagree with, almost to the point of being personal. A little more diplomacy on your own part could go a long way sometimes.
As a rules committee member, I don’t always agree with the majority of the rules committee on every issue, but I still have a high regard for the integrity and knowledge of each and every one of them. They are good people who are looking for the best solutions to problems. Over half of them (I believe) are experienced NTDs, and many are IAs as well.
It’s an improvement, but I’d like it to be even more bare-bones.
I agree, but at least it should mention G/3 inc/2 before it mentions G/5 d/0. There should be at least a small effort to push things toward the international standard.
Stay tuned for more on this specific subject, in my next post.
Bill Smythe
Okay, and mentioning G/3;inc2 before G/5;d0 makes sense when you consider that rule 5E in chapter 1 recommends two seconds of increment or delay in blitz.
Continuing from my previous post:
This no-freeze rule, as I understand it, came into play because of one incident that happened at one USATE event. Apparently, player X’s time expired, but player Y refused to claim a win on time, because he preferred to checkmate his opponent instead. But the clock had frozen, so either Y could take his own sweet time executing the checkmate, and/or X could take his own sweet time to resign (not sure which of those happened, maybe both). This delayed the start of the next round, and the TD staff was helpless, because “the TD isn’t supposed to call flags down”.
Rules crafted to cover corner cases are often bad rules. The no-freeze rule basically eliminates the nation’s most popular blitz clock, the DGT NA, for use in G/3 inc/2 situations. This is not good, since many organizers of blitz tournaments actually furnish DGT NA clocks for their G/3 inc/2 side events.
Much better would be an “emergency clause” rule. There are already two emergency-clause rules, adopted by both FIDE and U.S. Chess. One of these covers triple occurrence, the other covers the 50-move rule.
The “regular” part of the triple occurrence rule says (basically) that a player may claim a draw upon a triple occurrence of position. But what if a player chooses not to do so, and instead just repeats the position indefinitely?
Emergency clause to the rescue. It says that a TD may declare a draw after a five-fold occurrence of position. Voila! Both FIDE and U.S. Chess have this rule.
With the 50-move rule, the situation is similar. The “regular” part of the 50-move rule says (essentially) that a player may claim a draw upon completion of 50 consecutive move-pairs without a capture or a pawn move. But what if a player chooses not to do so, and just keeps playing?
Emergency clause to the rescue, once again. It says that a TD may declare a draw after 75 consecutive move-pairs without a capture or a pawn move. Again, both FIDE and U.S. Chess have this rule.
So, what should the emergency clause rule be for the case of a frozen clock?
It could say that, when a certain time has passed after a clock has frozen, the TD may declare a result. This “certain time” could be defined as 5 minutes regular, 3 minutes quick, or 2 minutes blitz. This “certain time” would mean as on the wall clock, not as on the chess clock, because of course the latter has frozen.
Let it be at TD discretion which ruling to make – loss for the player whose time has expired, or draw by insufficient mating material (or by some other rule). In the case where both players are being obstinate, the TD could even do both – loss for the player whose time has expired, and draw for the player who is not bothering to claim.
Chuckle. I would LOVE to see a scenario something like the following:
Scenario A. Player X has run out of time, player Y still has time and is clearly winning, and the clock has frozen. The TD waits a few seconds for somebody to make a claim, but after 10 seconds of silence, the TD asks both players, “Does either of you wish to make a claim?” After another 10 seconds of silence, the TD says, “All right, here’s what I’m going to do. If either of you makes a claim, I will rule on the claim. If neither of you makes a claim, I will rule the game a loss for player X and a draw for player Y. You have 10 seconds to respond. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, …”
If this doesn’t prompt Y to claim a win, nothing will, and he deserves only to draw. Meanwhile, X deserves nothing more than a loss, either.
I suppose there could be a few fringe cases (scenarios B, C, D, E, etc) but I strongly believe Scenario A will be the case 99% of the time, and that any decent TD could make an appropriate ruling under an appropriate “emergency clause” rule here.
For that matter, still another possible ruling in this “emergency clause” situation might be for the TD to substitute a clock that does not freeze, giving player X zero time and player Y whatever time he had. 
Then player X could sit there and suffer, not knowing whether player Y will claim or not, and if player Y’s time also expires, then it’s a draw.
Bill Smythe
It doesn’t completely eliminate the ability for it to be used in G/3;inc2 events.
Maybe not, but it makes it more of a sticky wicket. I think an emergency clause (as I described it above) would be much better.
Bill Smythe
This corner case and all related issues would go away if we handled this properly and just let the TD call the game as it should be. The FIDE rule is far superior here and much simpler. Time has obviously expired first for one player. That should stand. I don’t like the nonsense of having to wait until “both flags” have fallen and then declare a draw. If the clock can determine whose flag fell first, then it should be used.
Of course, convincing the rules committee and delegates to join the 21st century…
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Ay, there’s the rub.
As a member of the rules committee, I have the feeling that opinions on the committee itself might be divided about 50-50 on the question of whether the FIDE rule is superior here.
But I think almost everybody on the committee is concerned, legitimately, about the “and delegates” part. Motions to change rules must pass by a 2/3 vote, and even then they must pass two years in a row before they become effective (unless they pass by 85% the first time). So, the overriding concern becomes “what can we get past the delegates?”. With so many delegates having never directed since the analog days, AND so many preferring to sit in the TD room exchanging anecdotes rather than monitoring the floor for time forfeits, AND so many hanging onto their antiquated “the TD must NEVER call flags” philosophy (which, by the way, seems to exist only in the USA), it unfortunately follows that compromises often are necessary in order to get stuff passed. These compromises (such as my “emergency clause” idea) are often less than ideal, but that’s just the way life is.
Bill Smythe
+1
+1
Something vaguely similar could happen in the old analog clock days as well. At one scholastic event in last game of the round in the lowest-rated section in the K-3 division Black was taking his time on each move and was strongly winning over the board but had flagged. White had about 5 minutes left, was playing quickly, and did not understand the clock (in the K-3 section you don’t see many flags so it was probably nothing White had needed to deal with before). After a few minutes White was asked if she was playing for a win or a draw and responded by saying she was trying to win. This was, of course, the last game in an ASAP schedule. The coaches were outside the room and when the situation was explained (Black clearly winning but flagged) both agreed that a draw would be a decent resolution versus spending another half hour waiting for an OTB result or for White to finally realize what the flag meant.
Regarding the question of “what can we get by the delegates”, this delegate would heavily lean towards voting for any rules change which is endorsed by the rules committee and voting against any rules change which is NOT endorsed or evaluated by the rules committee. Closeness of the rules committee would matter. Note that I did say rules committee, not rules workshop. So I would like to see the rules committee submit ADMs that they believe are improvements without consideration as to whether they think they can get it past the delegates. An overwhelming vote in favor by the committee ought to matter, even to dinosaurs.
Thank you for the insight! I’m sure that whatever the rules committee submits, it will be something they consider an improvement, otherwise they wouldn’t bother submitting it. If it’s a close call between two possible improvements, though, perceived passability could be the determining factor.
Bill Smythe
The FIDE rule was predicated on having enough arbiters to reasonably oversee all of the games. The US Chess rule was predicated on having many more games than directors and not wanting to depend on directors picking the right games to oversee (there was some worry that a few directors would opt to oversee only those games where players they favor are not in time trouble).
An argument would need to be made that the risk of biased directors is way less than the problems caused by flags not getting called. My guess is that a majority would almost certainly agree, a 2/3 majority has a better than 50% chance of agreeing and an 85% majority may or may not agree depending on who the delegates happen to be. After seeing other rules changes pass by 2/3 one year and get overturned by 2/3 the following year (before the two-year or 85% levels were codified) I’m not sure if it would get 2/3 in two consecutive years. It is still worth proposing.
If the concern about biased directors is not mentioned in the motion and is not mentioned during debate then 85% has a good chance, but if bias is not mentioned in the motion and it IS mentioned during debate then even 2/3 has a decent chance of not being met (after being surprised, a number of delegates would prefer a motion referral over passing it). If bias IS mentioned and addressed in the motion then my seat-of-the-pants guess is that 2/3 would probably pass and 85% has a chance.
If an ADM was submitted for this rule change, I’d probably even be willing to accept a delegate spot just so I could vote in favor of it.
Three members of the rules committee has commented in this thread. What does the rules committee think about my proposal?