My opinion is that the capture should be “determined” when the moving piece has been released on its destination square, and the captured piece has been removed from its square. This is consistent with FIDE Laws of Chess 4.6a.
This does not change the rules regarding touch/move: if you touch an opponent piece you are obliged to capture it, if possible; if you touch your own piece you are obliged to move it, if possible. If you do both, then you may have reduced your options to one move, a capture, if that capture is a legal move. But touching pieces does not “determine” moves, even when touching pieces, in combination with the touch/move rule, reduces your possible moves to one. (We also don’t say that a move is “determined” when there is only one possible move available to the player, irrespective of touching. Determination does not have anything to do with how many legal moves are available to the player. To “determine” a move you have to execute it on the board.)
This means that if there is a mate in one, a capture, the checkmate is not determined until either (1) the instant the captured piece is lifted from its square, the capturing piece having been placed on its destination square; or (2) the instant the capturing piece touches the target square, the captured piece having been removed from its square.
In hindsight, “determined” was probably not the best choice of word, because the phrase “determined with no possibility of change” sounds like it should mean what Bill Smythe calls “decided”, whereas in terms of its actual usage in the 4th edition rulebook it means what Bill calls “executed”.
In 1993, when the 4th edition of the USCF rulebook was published, FIDE used the word “completed” to mean two different things: what Bill calls “executed” and what the USCF rules call “completed”. The current FIDE Laws of Chess distinguish between a move being “made” and being “completed”.
4th edition USCF rulebook, before the 1994 amendment:
1993 FIDE Laws of Chess:
(Article 10.1 is about checkmate, 10.2 is about resignation, 10.3 is about stalemate, 10.4 is about the game being drawn immediately with K vs. K etc… and 10.6 is about draws by agreement.)
Um, to me this looks the same as Meaning 2 (“decided”). Close, at least.
Now you’re throwing in the third concept, “completion”, which normally occurs when the clock is pressed.
So there are actually three stages – decided, executed, and completed. To be thorough about it, the gory details would have to read something like this:
a. A “regular” move is both decided and executed when the piece has been released on its new square, and completed when the clock is pressed.
b. A capture is decided when both the capturing piece and the piece to be captured have been touched, executed when the capturing piece has been released on its new square and the captured piece removed from the board, and completed when the clock is pressed.
c. If a piece has only one legal move, a move by that piece is decided when that piece has been touched, executed when the piece has been released on its new square, and completed when the clock is pressed.
d. A promotion is decided (if you follow the FIDE version) when the pawn has been touched and the new piece has touched the promotion square, executed when the pawn has been removed from the board and the new piece released on the promotion square, and completed when the clock is pressed.
e. If only one promotion is possible on a square, a promotion on that square is decided when the new piece has touched the promotion square, executed when the pawn has been removed from the board and the new piece released on the promotion square, and completed when the clock is pressed.
f. Castling is decided when the king has been released on its new square OR when both the king and rook have been touched, executed when both the king and rook have been released on their new squares, and completed when the clock is pressed.
g. Exception to all of the above: A move which delivers checkmate, stalemate, or a dead position is both executed and completed at the same time it is decided.
Now, what is the significance of each of these three stages?
“Decided” marks the moment when a player escapes a time forfeit in the event of a move which creates checkmate, stalemate, or a dead position.
“Executed” marks the moment at which it becomes proper for the player to press his clock.
“Completed” marks the moment at which the player escapes a time forfeit when the move does not create checkmate, stalemate, or a dead position. In addition, the interval between “executed” and “completed” is the proper time to offer a draw.
After a look at the above three, it can reasonably be argued that the “decided” concept comes into play so rarely that, in the interest of simplicity, it should be discarded. Tough. A player who wishes to avoid a time forfeit on a capture-checkmate would simply have to fully execute his capture, rather than merely decide it. Big deal.
Also, it’s likely that “determined” was a poor choice of words in first place. “Executed” may have been better. “Determined” tends to conjure up the “decided” concept – the very trap the rulemakers apparently fell into in 1994.
So, either change “determined” to “executed” throughout the rules, or simply keep in mind that “determined” is supposed to mean “executed” rather than “decided”.
I was not privy to those discussions either, but your explanation seems highly unlikely. Simple application of touch-move would prevent a player from reaching the erroneous conclusion you describe. Far more likely is that the rulemakers were simply mesmerized by the unwise choice of the word “determined”, and fell into the trap I mentioned before.
Actually that isn’t true in the case of rule 9C (4th edition; the rule is similar in the 5th edition):
Here the phrase “determined with no possibility of change” appears to mean “decided” rather than “executed”.
It seems to me now that the USCF rulebook’s use of the word “determined” isn’t entirely consistent. In some places (9C and the new 9B) it means “decided” and in other places (9E, 9G and the pre-1994 9B) it means “executed”. The FIDE Laws of Chess are more consistent in their use of the word “made”. For example, the FIDE rule for castling is:
I think the USCF rules should be changed to conform to the FIDE rules and use the word “made” rather than “determined”, but this is too extensive a change to be made between editions of the rulebook. The change should be made in the 6th edition. For now all we should do is fix the inconsistencies in the existing USCF rules.
Surprisingly enough, rules 10B and 10I don’t actually say this, although that should be the rule.
I disagree with that. Under FIDE rules the move has to be made, i.e. executed. USCF rule 9E says that “the move is completed simultaneously with its determination” but it also says that such a move (checkmate or stalemate, anyway - the rule doesn’t say anything about dead positions) is determined “upon release as described in 9A, 9B, 9C, or 9D, whichever applies.” To me this means a piece has to be released for the move to be determined/completed in this situation, and it’s not enough merely to touch pieces such that the move is decided. What’s not entirely clear is which piece has to be released if the move involves capturing, castling or pawn promotion.
Yeah, I guess that would depend on whether you want to go with the complicated, three-tier version (decided-executed-completed) or with the simpler two-tier model (executed-completed). Certainly in the latter case, a checkmating move should simply be completed at the same time it is determined.
I do hope, however, that we don’t end up allowing a player to avoid a time forfeit by “determining” a capture, simply by touching both pieces.
As I interpret rules 9E, 9B and 7C, if the player merely touched both pieces before his flag fell and didn’t perform the capture as required by 7C he would lose on time. 9E says the move is determined/completed “upon release” (of the capturing piece in this case, at least as I see it.)
No, because that interpretation is contrary to rule 7C.
I’ve changed my mind about this. The current rule has been essentially unchanged since 1994 and hasn’t caused any problems, despite being badly worded. This should be noted as a problem to be fixed in the next edition of the rulebook, similar to my proposed changes to rules 8F2 to 8F4.
It isn’t an “interpretation”. It is the plain meaning of 9B. “In the case of a legal capture (7C) the move is determined with no possibility of change when the player has deliberately touched both his or her own piece and the opponent’s piece and completed when the player presses the clock. See also 9G, Determined moves and completed moves.”
Moreover, Rule 9, is the rule on Determination and Completion of Moves, so it simply cannot be that 9B is, by chance, using the verb determined here other than to define when captures are determined. 9B comes in a series of sections defining when determination occurs in other complicated situations, such as castling (9C) and promotion (9D). The whole point of 9B is to define when a capture is determined.
There is no latitude for interpretation. 9B says precisely what it seems to be saying. What it says is so nonsensical, I am sure no TD would allow a player to get away with a player executing captures by touching both pieces and pressing the clock, should any player be nuts enough to try it. I am sure all TD’s, if confronted with a player pointing to 9B to justify that way of “capturing”, would find some way to ignore 9B, and require players to determine captures by removing the captured piece from the board and placing his own piece on the capturing square.
So 9B should be rewritten. Whether that is by the Delegates, or when the next edition of the rule book is done, is a different question.
In the first place, rule 9B only applies to legal captures as described in rule 7C. Rule 7C says:
In the second place, nowhere in the rulebook does it define the phrase “determined with no possibility of change” as meaning what Bill Smythe calls “executed”. In the current version of rule 9B it appears to mean what Bill calls “decided”, as it does in rule 9C (Castling).
9B isn’t nonsensical if “determined with no possibility of change” means “decided”. It’s true that 9B doesn’t say anything about physically executing the capture on the board, but it references rule 7C which does make that requirement. I do think the rule is badly written but it’s essentially the same rule that we’ve had since 1994, and since as you say no TD will allow a player to execute a capture by touching both pieces and pressing the clock there’s no real crisis. The rule can be improved in the next version of the rulebook.
It’s your INTERPRETATION that’s nonsensical. That the move has been “determined” doesn’t mean that it’s been MADE. See rule 5H – you hit the clock after MOVING (not just touching) your piece. Nowhere in 5H does it say you can hit the clock after “determining” your move.
Likewise any claim that a checkmating move has been made just because two pieces have been touched is nonsense. To to count as a “move” the piece has to actually MOVE. The move doesn’t have to be complete (clock pressed), but the moved piece still has to be released on its destination square. I won’t debate such meaningless quibbles as “what if the captured piece hasn’t been removed” – people don’t play chess that way.
It’s only 9E that actually needs to be rewritten (and the TD Tip, not a rule, to rule 13 should be rewritten) because it seem to give conflicting definitions of when a checkmating capture is determined – “upon release” and “as described … 9B”. I’d say that a checkmating capture must BOTH satisfy 9B AND the moving piece must be released on its destination square (as in 9E) to meet the 9E definition of “determined”, but 9E could explicitly say so…
On the other hand, you could save an awful lot of time, especially at the Nationals, because you would never have to reset any pieces. But it would be a lot harder to enforce “Touch Move” violations, though.
9E states that determination suffices for completion in the case of checkmate and stalemate. So, sorry, 9B does indeed mean that it suffices for checkmate and to determine the capture by touching the two pieces, as nonsensical as that may seem.
The rules don’t ever talk about moves being “made” or being “executed”, in any systematic way. These are not terms of art in the USCF rules. The USCF rules talk about “determination”. Events such as checkmate and stalemate, follow from “determination”.
Another example is that draw claims are supposed to be made after determination and before completion. And another example is 14D (Draw by Insufficient Material), which says that a game is drawn if various positions “arise”, making another situation in which a move-determination, rather a move-completion ends a game.
It would seem that the rules generally intend that determination is equivalent to a move being “made” or “executed”. Rules like 9E and 9G speak of determination as “release of the piece”, and 9A (Regular Moves), 9C (Castling) and 9D (Promotion) do include “transfer” and “release” as part of the conditions for their determination. But 9B has no element of “transfer” or “release”, just touching the two pieces. It would seem that the rules intend that determination is equivalent to “made” or “executed”. Solely for the case of capture, you can have a move that has been determined (with the consequences that follow from that), where there has been nothing like what we would normally regard as execution on the board.
There is no getting around the fact that 9B is just a very badly worded rule, and it is likely that most TD’s are ignoring what it actually says, and applying what they think it should say, in the cases where the issue comes up in games, which is fortunately rather rare.
So what??? You STILL have to have MOVED the piece before you can hit the clock (5H). For checkmating (or stalemating) moves you still have to have released the piece (9E, even if its wording is a little clumsy). So what consequence is there if 9B says captures are “determined” once both pieces are touched?
Just touching the pieces means there’s no longer any choice, but it doesn’t mean the move has been MADE.
I suppose you could say that successfully getting around 9B (with 5H, 9E, etc) has the effect of downgrading 9B from a bad rule to a merely inconsequential rule.
Checkmate, stalemate, and insufficient material can arise and the game can be over upon touching the two pieces rather than “making” the capturing move. Draw claims are allowed after touching the two pieces.
That’s what my proposal aims to change. By insisting that such moves be fully executed, everything becomes simpler, because then “determined” always means “executed”, and the “decided” concept goes away.
Besides, if you want to apply the “decided” concept to a checkmating capture, wouldn’t you also have to apply it to certain checkmating non-captures, e.g. when the checkmating piece has only one legal move? Such a move would be “decided” as soon as the piece is touched. Let’s be consistent here.
As I now interpret the rules, although most captures are determined (i.e. decided) when the player has touched both pieces (rule 9B), a capture that produces checkmate is determined (executed, more or less) “upon release” of the capturing piece (rule 9E).
Non-capturing moves are determined when the piece has been released on its new square (rule 9A). In your terminology, for most moves this is the moment when the move is both decided and executed. It’s also the moment (“upon release”) when the move is determined/completed if it produces checkmate.
If a player touches a piece that has only one legal move, in your terminology the move is decided, but it hasn’t been determined under rule 9A until the player has released the piece on its new square. Again, if the move produces checkmate, it’s not checkmate until the player has released the piece on its new square.
As I’ve said, I think the rules can be improved but this improvement can wait until the 6th edition.
Here, I think, you’ve hit on the crux of the problem.
To give you some history:
The concept of determining (as distinct from completing) a move was introduced in the 4th edition of the USCF rulebook. In the 3rd edition, the rule concerning captures simply read:
The clock was covered further on in the same section:
In the 4th edition, it was decided that the rulebook should differentiate between the point in the execution of a move when the player could no longer make a different choice (“determined”) and the point at which the other player was free to move (“completed”). The rules concerning move completion were reworded to use the new terminology, and rule I.8.B became:
Note that the extra words added make it clear what the word “determined” actually means in this context (in case the reader couldn’t figure this out by looking in a dictionary): A move is determined when it can no longer be changed by the player.
Unfortunately, by retaining the rest of the wording that had been employed in I.8.B, it also made 9B contradict the touch move rule, which said that a capture was determined with no possibility of change before the captured piece had been removed from the chessboard and the player’s hand had released the capturing piece!
If you think this error was unimportant, put yourself in the position of a player who starts to capture a piece with his queen, but realizes as he is touching the opponent’s piece that if he proceeds with the move he will lose his queen and, probably, the game. So he attempts, instead, to make a different move with his queen, only to be told that he cannot do so because he has already touched the opponent’s piece. And he replies, “But I clearly remember reading in the rulebook that a player who is executing a capture can change his mind and choose a different move up until he has removed the opponent’s piece from the board and released his own piece on the square!” So the TD shows him what the touch move rule says, and he shows the TD what rule 9B says, and they both agree that 9B, as it is worded, can do nothing but mislead people about when a player loses his right to choose a different move.
So the rule was, correctly, changed to read:
The issue which the TD tips for rules 13A and 14A are addressing is at what point in the execution of a checkmate or stalemate a fallen flag becomes irrelevant. I suspect that all it intended to say was that the player who executes a move checkmating or stalemating his opponent before his flag falls doesn’t lose on time, even if he doesn’t hit his button before the flag falls. But what it says, in the case where the checkmating or stalemating move is castling or a capture, is that the player does not actually need to have finished executing the move before the flag falls, as long as he has proceeded far enough with the move for it to have been determined, nor does he really need to finish executing it at all!
Note that the current version of rule 9B references rule 7C, which clearly states that the captured piece needs to be removed from the board. But since the TD tips for rules 13A and 14A, as worded, say that anything that happens after determination of these moves is irrelevant, then this would mean that checkmating and stalemating captures and castles do not need to be fully executed.
What’s missing in this rule is a requirement to execute the move on the board,
although that’s implied by the phrase “in the case of a legal capture” and the reference to rule 7C. Just as rule 9C says a castling move is “determined with no possibility of change when the player’s hand has released the king, which has moved two squares toward a rook, and completed when that player, having legally transferred the rook to its new square, presses the clock”, the revised rule in the 5th edition should have been something like:
The other problem with the revised rule is its effect on rule 9E, which says that in the case of a legal move which produces checkmate or stalemate, “the move is determined with no possibility of change upon release as described in 9A, 9B, 9C, or 9D, whichever applies.” The original 4th edition version of rule 9B talked about a piece being released but the 5th edition rule does not, at least directly. It can be inferred by 9B’s reference to 7C.
No, because according to rule 9E a move which produces or stalemate is determined “upon release” of a piece. Effectively, rule 9E redefines the term “determined” to mean executed instead of decided for moves which produce checkmate or stalemate.