Judgement Call

[Joe_Lux]

@Harold S.

The way I see it, is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If neither player had a scoresheet, and one of them made the claim you mentioned I’d say “let’s go over the moves from the beginning, hand me your scoresheet”, to which they’d answer “I didn’t keep score”, to which you’d reply “That’s a shame. In that case, the position on the board is the current position, have a nice day”. If 2 people make contradictory claims with no evidence to back up either, how can you make a qualified decision? The only thing I could see, is to just look where the pieces are physically and say ‘there it is’, if that makes any sense.

If you’re going to let the current position stand without so much as an explanation from the two players as to how they arrived at it you will find yourself to be a very ineffective tournament director.

Agreed.

[DENTONCHESS]

@Joe Lux

I was directing a nonrated scholastic event earlier this week. Of course, a TD is not bound by USCF regulation at such an event, but I would highly reccommend doing so.

There were no clocks used, and scorekeeping was not required. Yet what happened could very well happen under USCF conditions…

Two sixth graders are playing. They are in a crowded middlegame. Black plays Qe8xRh5. White plays QxQ. Black claims the white Q was on b1, not d1=wrong diagonal. White says, it was on b1 previously, but he moved it to d1 later. There aren’t any witnesses.

I ruled that the game continues with the white Q on d1, the white R on h5, the black Q on e8, black on move, and black may make any legal move.

Such a situation could happen under USCF conditions with a sudden death time control. NTD Glenn Petersen suggested going back to the last written position on both scoresheets, if such things existed during the game.

Any ideas, agruments, etc.?

All the best, Joe Lux, NTD

PS:

A local master had cleaned out a lot of stuff from his home. He gave me a box of about 70 old CLs for the kids. I invited the kids at this nonrated event to pick one issue to take home. The kids thought that was great. They never saw a chess magazine before. During the event, kids and parents asked me what USCF was.

The pretournament instructions for those sections and events in which notation
is not required, I simply tell the kids that as a TD I can answer any question
asked. It is just if they want the right answer, they need to notate.

Rob Jones