I am trying to find out the legal way to make a move during a U.S.C.F. rated tournament. Is a player supposed to move a piece, write down their move and then hit the clock, or are they supposed to move their piece, hit the clock and then write down their move? Whichever way is the legal way to make a move, can someone point me to the rule in the U.S.C.F. rulebook where it states this?
This question came up during a tournament I recently attended and I think this is an important question, as in a typical forty move match, if a player saves two seconds per move by being able to make their move, hit the clock and then write down their move, this would be a total time savings of eighty seconds, or a minute and twenty seconds. In a short time control game, this is a significant amount of time. I personally think that it seems to make sense that part of a move is recording it and one shouldn’t be hitting the clock until their move is recorded.
What is the U.S.C.F. rule on this? Thanks for anyone that can provide clarification on this issue.
Almost all players press the clock before writing their move but it is not required. The order is optional. There is no rule specifying which order is used.
If one player can save 80 seconds by pressing the clock first, then so can the other, at each other’s expense. So it’s a wash. There would be no point in making a rule requiring a player to write the move first.
In other words, a player may in fact record both his move and the opponent’s previous move on the opponent’s time under FIDE rules. I must be losing my mind; I thought there was similar text in the USCF rules (most likely in rule 15, The Recording of Games), but I’m not finding it. A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
This is out of date and also does not address the original question of whether the move must be completed before pressing the clock.
For a brief time, rule 15A was modified to require that the move be made first on the board and then recorded. (This is what the FIDE Laws of Chess require.) The motivation for the change was the introduction of electronic scoresheet devices such as the MonRoi; recording the move first on such a device would show the player a representation of the chess board with the resulting position, which would be an aid to analysis.
However, there was considerable backlash from players who were used to pen and paper scoresheets and who were in the habit of writing the intended move first on the scoresheet and only then making the move on the board. As a result, the delegates kept the modified rule 15A but introduced a variation which allows players using paper scoresheets to write the move on the scoresheet first. This variation is “minor” and does not need to be announced in all advance publicity.
In my experience, the variation still appears to be almost universal practice.
I strongly recommend all TDs read the Rulebook Changes document available from the USCF web site, and I also suggest printing a copy and keeping it with the director’s copy of the rule book. For the environmentally concerned, I think most TDs could safely skip printing the pages concerning TD certification, as that is not a topic likely to arise in a dispute between players.
Ken, I just sent out a note to the chair of the rules committee and the USCF’s director of publications suggesting that we might want to post the 2011 rules update (which needs to be posted soon anyway) in multiple documents, including one with just the tournament rules themselves, formatted to match the size of the rulebook.
Your estimate of 80 seconds is waaaayy too low.
Time yourself merely copying the first 41 move-pairs of any game notation published in print or on the web.
And feel how tiring it was to write those 82 moves.
Chess coaches who advise their young impressionable students to write their move down first are increasing the risk that the student will develop time-wasting habits that push him into time pressure near time-control boundaries.
And the unethical aspect of taking any kinds of notes during the game is an additional drawback of that coaching choice.
Having kids write their move down first slows them down and makes them think before they move. Many scholastic coaches try to break the bad habit of moving too fast. When I was a young player, many moons ago, I asked one of the veteran experts what would be better, to move and then write my move or to write the move and then play it. His reply was to write the move first. Why? " Because that is what Capablanca and Alekhine did. Period." Sounded like a good enough argument to me at the time. If you play slow time controls, the order doesn’t matter very much.
Correct, if you are playing with slow time controls, the order doesn’t matter very much. However, in a 60 minute or less game, the extra time it takes to make your move, write it down and then hit the clock can be critical and add up to a decisive time pressure problem.
I am amazed and very surprised that I’m being told that the U.S.C.F. doesn’t have a rule on this. Depending on how fast one writes down their moves, the time it takes to do this is about one to three minutes over a typical forty move game. This is significant in a short time controlled game.
The rules are clear in that we must record every move, so it seems to me it stands to reason and is logical that a move is therefore defined as making your move, writing it down and then hitting the clock and by hitting the clock signifying that you have completed your move. If instead we make our move, hit the clock and then write down our move, then we are in essence completing our move on our opponents time. This isn’t fair.
Further still, if we have one player who is making their move, writing it down and then hitting the clock, where’as their opponent is making their move, hitting the clock and then writing down their move, then that 80 seconds or so, (minimum), that is being saved by player #2 is in effect being doubled as player #1 is taking approximately double the time to record and make their moves.
I feel this issue needs to be addressed, as in many chess tournaments these days, the time controls are 60 minutes or less and time pressure can be a huge and common factor.
Ken, my post of the current rulebook is not out of date. It’s the exact 15A wording in the Rulebook Changes document. The Rulebook Changes has added 15A1, which states,
Here’s the bottom line: nothing says you have to notate prior to pressing the clock (i.e. completing the move). We only address the before/after of determining the move.
Personally I don’t think it’s much of gap, but am encouraged that players ask clarifying questions to know and understand the rules to the best of their abilities.
I beg to differ that the notation has anything to do with the determining or completion of a move. The only exceptions to this are the procedure for claiming a threefold repetition of position, and the admonition that repeatedly changing one’s written move before it has been determined is not legal.
If it is reasonable to assume that notation is part of the moving process, where then does this fit into time pressure where notation is excused, or players who are excused from keeping score? (Time is usually deducted for the latter per the rulebook, however, this relates to the whole game and not the individual process of making a single move.)
It is absolutely fair, since we have to write down our opponents’ moves on our time. It stands to reason that we should be able to write down our moves on theirs.
If one player were required to write before pressing, but the other could press before writing, that would be unfair. As long as the same rules apply to both players, everything is fair – it’s just not the rule you would prefer.
It already has been addressed – through decades of tournament play with clocks, which have established the common practice of pressing before writing.
I should add that your preferred version would be completely logical, if it were done universally. But the existing version is also completely logical. So there’s no good reason to change what 99.9% of players already prefer.
False, I believe.
After I press my clock, I write my opponent’s latest move, then my just-completed reply; all while my opponent’s clock ticks.
MY JUSTIFICATION:
Rule 13C7: “no more than three incomplete or missing move pairs”.
Thus no penalty for being only one move pair behind.
An awareness of 13C3 nudges our interpretation of 13C7.
Rule 15A is too vague on this point to be relevant: “move after move”?
And I see no text that specifically explains the interaction of 15A and 13C7.
ILLEGIBLE:
From my experiences trying to decypher hand-written move scoresheets, I wonder whether illegible notation is another related major practical problem?
At times when in time pressure, I have resorted to legibly writing only the uppercase letter of the piece that moved, hoping that would be enuf clue for me to later reconstruct. Would this potentially good-enuf notation meet the requirements of 13C7? Or would illegible full SAN notation be more satisfactory to 13C7?
The longer LAN notation makes it much easier to reconstruct after routine notation errors and omissions.
Regarding Echeque’s 80 seconds estimate: In my test it took me about 7 minutes (about 400 seconds) to copy 82 moves as quickly as I could. This copying is easier than transcribing real board moves into notation, including re-grabbing your pen etc.
My estimate was intentionally very conservative as to highlight the point that this is an important issue that apparently the rules don’t address. I’m amazed.
My estimate was intentionally very conservative as to highlight the point that this is an important issue that apparently the rules don’t address. I’m amazed.
The rules also don’t address where each player sits relative to the board. Who says white sits nearest the white pieces, and black nearest the black? It could be the other way around.
Some issues are so obvious (or so well established) that they don’t need to be addressed. Whether to press or write first is one of those.
