Have you ever heard this chess “rule” before

Running Chess Tournaments
1

I ran an unrated tournament yesterday. We are trying to get a new club started in an area that has not had an active club in recent years. We had a lot of variety of players, from very new players to experienced tournament players. I had never met most of them before yesterday.

As I walked the room, I heard one player say to his opponent that the opponent had 25 moves left. Hmmm… The player who made this claim was down to a lone King, while the opponent had two separated pawns and a King in an excellent position to Queen one of them unless he really messed up.

I watched for a bit, as lone-King player began counting each of his opponent’s move aloud. I intervened to quietly tell him there was no “25 move” rule, and that we could discuss the real rule once the game was over. (One could disagree with my choice to step in early instead of waiting for an actual claim. My reading of his mood was that he was getting more and more hyper and might throw a large fit if I waited longer. I didn’t know him.)

He was totally shocked, as apparently he had always played with the “rule” that a lone King must be checkmated within 25 moves or the game was a draw. I assured him that I have been running USCF tournaments for over 20 years and had never seen such a rule. I suggested it might have been a “local rule” used somewhere that he had played.(?) I explained the 50-move rule.

Has anyone ever heard this before? I have heard some pretty strange “rules”, but never this one.

2

I don’t think I’ve heard it phrased exactly that way, but I’ve heard similar (nonexistent) rules about games involving a lone king. I think my favorite was the one where if you march your king all the way to the other side of the board, you get a piece back.

3

I’ve run into some unusual"local rules" with folks who learned to play in prison.

4

It may have been a simplistic misunderstanding of the 50-move rule. 50 moves on the board would be seen as 25 by each player and not everybody knows that the 50 move count restarts after every capture or pawn move. I have had to explain multiple times that lasting until move 50 in a game does not mean that it is a draw.

5

I have heard a bunch of “my Dad said” rules over the years from kids. One “rule” was that a game ends after 50 moves, with the result determined by who was ahead in material. The “rule” that you have to checkmate a lone King in 25 moves or less else it is a draw is another I have had to explain does not exist.

One of my favorite situations to have dealt with at a big tournament was seeing a kid promote his lone King to a Queen while the other kid had a lone King. At that point, the latter player was going to resign. I stopped the game and explained the rules to them. When I asked the first player why he thought he could promote his King to a Queen, he replied that his Dad told him he could do that. His Dad was their team’s coach.

6

I remember being in the TD room at the National Elementary when a young child came into the room and asked “One of my kings is checkmated, does that mean I lose?”

Yes, there were clearly 2 kings for one of the players, it appeared that he had promoted one of his pawns to a king. It was the other king that was checkmated.

7

I had two players ask me what to do because one of the players had one of his Kings captured. The other King was still on the board.

8

You mean you didn’t get the game where a king was captured and then the player pushed a pawn to promote to a replacement king?

9

No - they each had a King on the board and wanted to know what to do after black captured white’s other king.

3rd graders

No notation

This became a draw.

Then a conversation with two coaches.

10

I’ve heard of this 25 move rule. It’s right next to the rule where all fines go into a pot and you get them for landing on free parking.

11

Thanks for the laughs, fellow TDs. You have heard some good ones. :laughing:

12

Heard not one, but two yesterday -
one, an adult very desperate, and getting destroyed by a kid rated less than 700,
told this opponent that he was claiming the 3 move rep draw. Both players were under 5 minutes, and neither was notating. The youthful opponent denied both the
de facto draw offer (naturally) and stated that she thought that it was only two positions the same when her adult opponent was on the move.

This was a strange one, because after I ruled in favor of the youth, the adult called her a cheater, and admonished her as in his opinion, she was being disobedient, and
not playing fair. Strange because it was the adult I had to speak with about proper
tournament decorum, and explaining that to make a case, he had to notate himself.

In another game, in the novice section, had a kid (this is a common one) insist that despite only having a lone king against an army that he should be awarded a draw because the game had gone more than 50 moves, and he could prove it with
his notation. He did not understand that pieces being taken, or pawns moving restart the count. But as someone stated upthread, he was adament because
daddy/and his school coach, told him that after 50 moves tha losing side could claim a draw.

Fortunately (which is not always the case), the winning side raised their hands for the Tournament Directors opinion of the rules rather than taking their opponents advice. I have had parents furious with me when their kids accepted draws, or
even resigned with winning positions because of false “rules” coming from their opponents, causing their little ones to shake hands, end the game, and reset the pieces, and I refused after their game was over to overturn the result.

And from another thread, it seems to me that cheating allegations are at an all time high. And quite a few of these allegations are coming from folks that are simply unjustly hyper paranoid, or simply do not know the rules.

Rob Jones

13

Now wait a moment - I love this variant rule in monopoly !!! :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

14

This may end up being another thread split.

Cheating allegations have always been there (a few decades ago it seemed like about a 100 to 1 ratio of accusations to actual problems, and most of the actual problems were misunderstandings of the rules - such as the 50-move “rule” cited in your post). One thing I’ve found is that the allegations go down when the initial announcements emphasize calling TDs over to resolve any confusion about the rules. That has a bonus with players not thinking their opponents are conniving manipulators that are trying to circumvent the rules, but rather having the players thinking their opponents are clueless and the TDs will make rulings that result in supporting players that correctly follow the real rules. Thinking your opponent is clueless and will be educated as necessary is much less of a hit to a person’s composure than thinking your opponent has to be watched like a hawk.

Just be prepared to grant immediate losses or ejections to players found intentionally cheating.

15

Name-calling by an adult, toward a kid…that is pathetic.

16

Yes, but I wasn’t talking about Monopoly! :open_mouth: :smiley: