Insufficient Losing Chances vs Insufficient Delay Time

Running Chess Tournaments
1

OK, I’ll start it off. (This discussion began in the Tournament Organization forum, in the conversation “Why have time delay?”.)

The full name of rule 14H is “Claim of insufficient losing chances in sudden death”. As found in the 5th edition rulebook (and also the 4th edition), it is a hodge-podge. It came about because warring factions on the rulebook revision committee wanted to update the 4th edition version in differing degrees, and because the chief editor wanted mostly to get on with it and get the book into publication. The rule was not liberalized enough, in my opinion.

It may be that, indeed, using a delay clock in response to a claim with K+N+P vs K+N+3P, would be stretching the current rule quite a bit. Yet, one of the TD tips says that a delay clock “is the preferred method of resolving a 14H claim for directors who wish to ensure the result of the game is determined by the players, rather than any outside influence.” (There are those warring factions again.) Many TDs (perhaps even the majority) already would use a delay clock in this example. The rule should certainly give full blessing to any TD who wishes to do this.

To begin with, the name of the rule should be changed, from “Claim of insufficient losing chances in sudden death” to “Request for relief from insufficient delay time in sudden death”. The idea would be that the clock situation, rather than the position, should be the primary basis for a claim. “Insufficient delay time” should be defined as under 5 seconds of delay time (or no delay time) per move, when under 2 minutes remain in sudden death.

Such a request should still be considered a draw offer, even though the word “draw” would not appear in the name of the rule.

When presented with such a “request for relief”, the TD should have three options:

(1) Deny the request, and direct the players to continue the game.

(2) Put a delay clock on the game (with appropriate adjustments to the claimant’s time, just as at present).

(3) Declare the game drawn immediately.

Option (1) could be used most of the time (or even all the time) by TDs who prefer to be conservative. After all, it is the players’ responsibilities to furnish proper equipment to begin with.

Option (2) could be used most of the time (or even all the time) by TDs who prefer that the players, rather than the TD, decide the outcome.

Option (3) should be used VERY sparingly. (A few positions are so hopelessly drawn that this option might be appropriate.)

TDs could use extremes (1) or (2), or anything in between. In practice, a TD might want to use option (2) whenever the addition of the delay time is likely to affect the outcome, and option (1) in most other cases.

Players who object that the above options will result in too little uniformity in policy from one TD to another, should remember that if they had furnished a delay clock to begin with, they would be creating their own uniformity.

Thoughts?

Bill Smythe

2

Hello Bill, I’ll start with a couple of nitpicking comments. You bravely started this thread knowing that it is a hot-button issue. We can politely throw some darts at the proposal, find out where the resulting holes are, and then see if it can be patched up and made workable.

To keep the phrasing consistent with other draw attempts, it might be better if the title is “Claim of insufficient delay time in sudden death” rather than “Request for relief from insufficient delay time in sudden death”. It would still double as an immediate draw offer.

The definition of insufficient delay time should probably be when it is either zero or under the standard delay time used by the tournament rather than always being under five seconds (many quick tournaments use less than a five second delay). If the standard delay time of the tournament is zero (maybe for a G/5 tournament) then the current methods of resolving the claim without placing a delay clock on the game can be used.

I would not have many problems with such a change to the rules. As they are currently stated in the rulebook, a position can be reached that a grandmaster could not expect to hold against a master (let alone a C-player hold against a master) and an ILS request can be summarily rejected (often resulting in the player losing on time). If there are two D-players involved then it is quite possible that the D-player in the advantageous position does not know how to win the game and would draw with normal play (one obvious example with be K trying to make a claim when facing K+B+N - a book win for which there is currently no justification for giving even the slightest consideration to placing a delay clock on the game, but one even some experts may not be able to do within fifty moves) and thus the final result of the game actually depends on the TD’s judgement of the position (generally a totally correct judgement if the TD can summarily reject the claim) rather than the skill of the players.

One reason I chose the K vs K+B+N position is because it is a perfect example of TDs justifiably choosing either your option 1 or your option 2, and possibly even the same TD opting to go with option 1 when directing at the US Masters and option 2 when directing a local scholastic K-3 tournament. Since the suggested rule change doesn’t address the strength of the players, it opens the door for a TD to take that strength into account when making the ruling (and imagine the conversation if a TD chooses option 1 in a position in the master’s section of a tournament and option 2 in the same position in the U1200 section of the same tournament - the different option choices may be reasonable when taken individually, but the inconsistency has its own problems). This simple but extreme example highlights some of the pitfalls you are attempting to get around when proposing a rule change, and is one reason I hesitated to kick things off with an actual proposal.

3

I’m not sure I understand your point. Under the current rules, the TD can always insert a delay clock simply by ruling that the claim is “neither correct nor clearly incorrect.” In my opinion, the TD should rule this way most of the time, to avoid having the TD’s playing strength affect the outcome of the game.

4

This is not a realistic example, since a player with K vs K+B+N cannot win the game. You could construct such a position with the weaker side having a pawn left, but if the player with the two pieces made a claim, wouldn’t his opponent accept the draw?

If a rules change is going to be contemplated, I would suggest getting rid of the silly “C-player vs master” business (a makeshift of historical interest only), and replacing it with “player is able to (at least) draw with a 5-second time delay in effect.” It’s simple and measurable.

5

The rule 14H as designed, is not designed in a universal way with the delay clock. The director should not over turn the spirit of the delay clock. The rule 14H takes away the right of the director to make any adjudications.

The position on the board has nothing to do with the claim of a draw. The position on the board is pointless, as the delay clock is the primary and universal basis of the claim.

6

Rfeditor, In the K vs. K+B+N example, I stated that the side with the lone King was the one that could try making an insufficient delay time claim (the opponent with the K+B+N cannot lose and has little reason to not try to play on to get the mate). The player with the lone king cannot make a claim under the current ILS rules but the proposal of Bill’s, if passed, would allow a TD to decide whether or not to put a delay clock on. In a game between two masters, the king would generally lose either on time or by getting mated, so adding a delay clock does not provide much of a gain to the player with the lone king. In a game between two D-players the player with the lone king that is in danger of flagging has a decent chance of reaching the 50-move draw or three-fold repetition if a delay clock is put on, and the player with the K+B+N may end up only being able to realistically win by continuing the game without delay and flagging the lone king because the technique to mate the king is not known by the player.

As my earlier post stated, whether or not to put a delay clock on in this situation is something that can be debated.

As far as a position similar to K+N+P vs K+N+3P goes, many very experienced and highly ranked directors read 14H and see that a master with K+N+3P should be able to win significantly more than 10% of the time against a C-player with K+N+P and thus they simply deny the claim without putting a delay clock on. The way 14H is currently written, that is a quite valid ruling and actually putting a delay clock in this situation on might be considered a clear error by the director. At HB there was at least one summarily denied claim that was on a similar level to this.

Removing the C-player vs master criteria opens the door to claims (including the K making the claim while defending against a K+B+N) that would appear ridiculous to masters while being quite understandable to many experts and below. The $64 question is “should that door be opened and, if so, by how much?”.

I personally would also be happy to see the C-player vs master criteria changed significantly as some clearly advantageous positions, where 14H would simply be denied, still have a lot of play and the defender has many opportunities for traps and swindles that may prevent the inferior side collapsing. Having the inferior side run out of time, rather than have a chance to defend, can change the game from a game of chess to a game of clock-punching.

7

It is important to realize that the current rule was developed over an extended period as a compromise among different and sometimes conflicting interests.

The original idea was to avoid situations in which a player lost solely because of the clock, when in a “real” (non-sudden-death) time control he could have reached the next control. In other words, ILS was to provide a lifelike simulation of a “normal” (non-sudden-death) game.

The rules about time-delay clocks – if you have it at the start, use it; if you don’t start with time-delay, you can’t insert it except with an ILS claim/draw offer – were written that way because a majority of the Rules Committee wanted to … influence … players (coerce is probably too strong a word) to use time delay. Thus, players who did not start with a time-delay suffered a small disadvantage. This was intentional. (There were also practical reasons – the TD is not going to lay in an unlimited supply of clocks – but that’s another matter.) This is clearly relevant to your example of K vs K+B+N. If you want to change the rule to say that a player can ask for a time-delay clock in any position if he’s short enough of time (as Bill apparently does), you could get this one in, but I can’t think of any lesser standard that would, since it’s a forced win.

Your other example, of K+N+P vs K+N+3P, takes us right back to the original problem of TD adjudication. Should the claim be rejected because it is being made by the weaker side? Suppose the TD, who is 600 points stronger than the two players, sees immediately that the player with one pawn is actually winning (though obviously neither of the players realize it)? Suppose the position is a simple draw (the three pawns are tripled, for example), but the TD, 600 points weaker than the players, counts the pawns, rejects the claim, and tries to penalize the claimant?

Our goal should be to minimize participation by the TD in determining the outcome of the game. What is the best way to do so?

8

If the players have the delay clock on the board, there is no minimize participation for any position on the board. The directors have no right for any adjudication on the position of the board. The director has no right for adjudication of the position, just to make one player happy; or the whole body of players in the tournament happy; or the director happy with the adjudication of the game.

Its’ not the same if you can show a draw with the scoresheet. As the scoresheet can show the game ending in a draw. The scoresheet has nothing to do with the delay clock, making the scoresheet independent of any claims or rights of the delay clock.

If we get nick picking when the director can or cannot have the right for adjudication of the delay clock. The ‘Official Rules of Chess’ would be the size of the United States tax code. Since the goal is not having any adjudication of the delay clock, then the director has no right to stop the game because it no longer makes the director or the players happy.

The 5th edition has given rights for the owner of the delay clock. Do not like these special rights for the owner of the delay clock. As the owner of the delay clock can and has the right to play on even when it runs into the next round or the prize award of the last and final round.

9

Doug,

The TD can adjourn the game (pages 72-78 in the 5th edition). That-a-way the game does not run into the next round.

By the way when was the last time anyone can remember that a game with a delay clock went so long that it really did run into the next round or prevented the awarding of prizes for any length of time? The rulebook was written to cover “normal” not “extreme” situations. In extreme situations the TD is expected to use common sense. Blindly following any rule “no matter what” is probably not a good idea.

Tim Just
Chief Editor 5th edition USCF Rulebook

10

To quote the Princess Bride:

Fezzini: Inconceivable!
Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means

(Insert 14H or adjudication here)

11

I’ll buy that. In fact, I like your version better.

I’ll buy that, too. In fact, that’s what I meant – I just didn’t want to complicate the initial discussion. Wherever I said “5 seconds”, please substitute “the standard delay time used by the tournament”, as you suggested.

I initially thought K vs K+B+N was a strange example, but now I see your point. A more straightforward example, however, might be K vs K+P – one of the drawn ones, but not with RP (that’s TOO drawn).

At the chess club one night I played about 30 consecutive “test endings” against a player who never caught on. The position was the same in all 30 – white Ke4, Pd4, black Ke6, white to move. We alternated colors each time. Every time I was white, I won. Every time I was black, I drew. My opponent, though eager to learn, somehow never figured out the key move (…Kd8) even after watching me play it 15 times.

Anyway, if this position arises between two grandmasters, I could easily see awarding the draw immediately, whereas with players below 1600 (maybe even below 2200), I would be more likely to use a delay clock.

And that’s a Good Thing. A reasonable guideline for option 3 (declaring the draw immediately) might be to award the draw only if the TD feels it is a virtual certainty that a draw would result if the 5-second delay were added.

It looks as though you and I are on the same wavelength (at least approximately).

Bill Smythe