There’s always weird cases like this, but obviously they should be rare.
This is one of Mr. Smythe’s favorite examples. Check his previous threads.
Alex Relyea
I wouldn’t want the TD to have the responsibility of discerning whether a position was draw-excluded.
Take a look at this thread. In it, I posed a puzzle: Come up with a position where the player on move has only two legal moves, one of which immediately checkmates the opponent, the other of which leaves his opponent with only one legal move, which checkmates the player.
jwiewel came up with a couple of good solutions.
Bill Smythe
That one is a little different. It’s definitely draw-excluded, but it does only half of what my puzzle asked, as white has only one legal move, which immediately checkmates black. So it is win-excluded for black, as well as draw-excluded. Automatic win for white?
I don’t think you’d have much of a problem. Very few positions are draw-excluded, and most (if not all) of those should be pretty obvious on sight.
Bill Smythe
The discussion seems to be trailing off so this may be a good time to finish the story.
I am surprised that there was not more of a spirited discussion. I expected many more to state that the TD should rule the game a draw and was curious to see the basis.
I am not sure I agree with Ken Ballou that 21D is the right rule. Clearly, white is making a claim and the TD must do something - non-intervention is not an option. However, there is no rule that allows the TD to declare the game a draw, so I agree that the claim should be denied. Perhaps Ken and I are saying the same thing in a different way.
What I did was ask white to state the basis for his claim of a draw. He replied that black can’t win. I explained that there was no rule where the TD could declare the game a draw on that basis and directed the game continue. Black stated he wanted to continue the game to its natural conclusion (or something like that). I thought he was being sincere and was not trying to be annoying. The game ended in a draw a few minutes later.
I have had some directors state that 14D4 supports this players claim that if the opponent has a lone king, he can claim a draw. I don’t read 14D4 that way though I confess that I have a hard time knowing exactly what 14D4 is supposed to do.
Scot Henderson’s idea of allowing the flag to fall did come up later. If white has a significant amount of time and refuses to move, this could be construed as unsportmanlike conduct. Another NTD suggested a variation. Thinking back to the days of adjournment where a player was voluntarily allowed to give up his time to reach the end of a playing session, the NTD suggested allowing white to advance his clock until his flag fell. A variation of this discussion involved white asking the director what would I have to do to incur a penalty of all my time. Another variation is white stating I refuse to keep score, please take my clock down to 5 minutes.
I posted this because I was sympathetic to the feeling that the game should be a draw, but there is no good way to do so.
As I stated in the initial post, much more time was spent on this case than it merited. The player spent more time arguing his case for the draw than the game lasted.
BTW, I totally agree with Harold Stenzel that it would be a bad idea to have a rule that states when an opponent has a lone king an opponent may claim a draw.
I was surprised nobody invoked rule 1 to declare the game a draw.
Maybe the next discussion I start will be more interesting. 
Dave Hater
Dave, please not that the idea of white intentionally flagging was mine, not Scot’s and I specified that I would inform both the TD and the opponent of my intention. Under those circumstances, I don’t believe that would be unsportsmanlike at all. It also might induce black to take the draw.
Of course, under the facts in your test case, where black was not taking undue time on his moves, there was absolutely no reason not to just play it out. The draw would be apparent to all in minutes anyway.
I did not interpret the words “White now becomes unhinged and demands that the TD declare the game a draw” in the original statement to be a claim. If it is treated as a claim, then I agree that the director must handle the claim. And I would handle it by muttering “balderdash, batsqueeze, and rot” and adding two minutes to Black’s clock for good measure. More seriously, I would ask White under what rule he was claiming the draw, then ruling the claim incorrect and assessing the two minute penalty for the incorrect claim, as Mr. Hater describes below.
Two years ago, I made an ADM to clarify the wording of 14D4. I thought it was straightforward, but the ADM was referred to the rules committee and died. I shall reintroduce that ADM for this year’s meeting, although I have been asked not to do so.
The current version of rule 14D4 is:
My ADM is to change that to:
I believe the intent of 14D4 is to serve the same purpose as article 5.2.b of the FIDE Laws of Chess:
The intent of 14D4 seems clear based on the types of position described in 14D1 through 14D3 (king vs. king, king vs. king+bishop or king+knight, king+bishop vs. king+bishop with bishops on diagonals of the same color). However, the wording implies that the game is drawn if one player cannot checkmate the other. Mr. Smythe has correctly noted that if 14D4 is reworded as in my ADM, then 14D1 through 14D3 are redundant and could safely be relegated to a TD TIP, as they simply describe three types of positions in which neither player can checkmate the opponent.
Perhaps we could expand the “No Losing Chances” claims:
Or, modify, 14E to say that the claimant does not have to wait for his clock to run out:
You would be shocked what I’ve seen in U1200 sections. I realize that these are A players, and they should know better.
Unless it is clear in 14, Let them play it out.
I’m quite sure you’ve never seen a player with a lone king win. If a game has been reported that way, I’d investigate.
Alex Relyea
Actually it has happened at least once that I know of where a player with a lone king has been reported as winning. What happened was that the opponent resigned. This possibility has been well discussed in another thread. In this case the TD running the show relied on the first sentence of rule 13B - “The player whose opponent resigns wins the game.” - and scored it 1-0.
I have been personally involved in K+R each, K+rp vs K, K and B wrong color RP. TD’s statement play it out. I don’t want to upset the stronger player. And I Seen things .in u1200 sections you really would not believe.
I have been told in junior tourneys: “Let them go to bare Kings, unless next round is delayed.”
What if a player with a lone king is facing an opponent whose cell phone rings? The original poster suggested to me that the phone offender lose and the lone king draws but an argument could be made that the lone king should win. What would FIDE do?
Cell Phone Penalty Example was a nice discussion about that very example.
Under the FIDE Laws of Chess, the player with the lone king would win the game. Article 11.3.b of the Laws of Chess contains the simple four word declarative sentence “[t]he opponent shall win.” There is no consideration of whether the opponent has mating material.
In that case, there would not be anything to investigate, since the arbiter would be the one imposing imposing the penalty.
Clearly, we need a new rule: “Claim of Insufficient Winning Chances”
Here is why and where this analogy falls apart and is untenable:
People are PAYING to play in these events and the participants have agreed to the authority of the federation, The Event rules and policies, the Tournament directors rules and policies, and the rules of public decorum.
Tournament chess is not a game “between two players” because the players have zero say in who they play. They are paired together by a higher authority.
It is disingenuous and perhaps a bit hypocritical that the authorities responsible for the running of the event would later decline intervention in a matter and dynamic such as described by the OP.
This could only be viable had they no interest in the game to begin with but the game only exists because the authority running the event is the one that created the game … not the players.
In light of this reality, please reconsider your position here on this specific matter.
Thank you.
Intervening in games without being asked to is an area that a TD must be extremely cautious about. For local scholastics I have no qualms calling a checkmate or stalemate (technically the game ended the moment the last piece was released) but anything else means the game is still going on, and please be ridiculously certain that it really is a checkmate or stalemate if you ever do call it (reminder - verify that only one king is in check, not both).
Even when doing something as simple as ruling on an 18G1 claim please make sure that the person that is “sitting” is really on move and not waiting (quite legally) for the opponent’s unpunched clock to flag.
After seeing class A players mess up K&P vs K, and experts mess up K&2B vs K, I will not insert my analysis capabilities into an ongoing game.
In the particular OP situation I might, perhaps, possibly say that if the requester voluntarily gives up all of his time then I’ll make a ruling (rarely would that option be taken by a requestor).