Need opinion on piece placement dispute.

Running Chess Tournaments
1

The TL is G/15 and neither player has kept notation due to the nature of the tournament. White is ahead in material having captured Black’s queen and also a rook. White plays his Queen to g8 giving check to the Black king on h7. Black wants to capture because a White knight on d7 is not protecting the queen. But, White states that the knight is on e7 and does protect the queen. White further claims that Black bumped the knight with his elbow when reaching for his king and thus displaced the knight from e7 to e8.

In trying to determine the prior position of the knight Black states that it was played previously from c5 to d7. White claims that it came from f5 to e7. Players at adjoining boards did not see anything.

Trying to reconstruct the last few moves both players agree that Black had played his own knight to e5 which would have left it “en pris” to a white knight on d7. This led me to believe that perhaps the white knight was indeed on e7. Otherwise White may have seen and captured the en pris Black knight on e5. Furthermore, White logically would have had to leave his queen en pris by playing it to g8 if his knight was indeed on d7.

I ruled that since White would have had to miss both en pris pieces, and also that Black would have had to place his own knight in jeopardy by moving to e5 that the likelyhood was that White’s knight was originally on e7 and allowed the game to continue with the queen check on g8.

Ruling in Black’s favor would more than likely reverse the outcome of the game, while in White’s favor would most likely end in the same result.

I cannot locate a chess rule that backs up my decision. Is there a place that anyone can cite to help us out?

2

Try rule 11C. It really depends where the knight is. It seems like it’s impossible to determine where the knight is supposed to be (since White was up a queen and a rook I’m not going to make assumptions about either player leaving pieces hanging), so by 11A, you go from where the knight actually is. If Black accidentally moved the knight, White should have stopped his clock and made him move it back.

Alex Relyea

3

The piece was displaced accidently, it was bumped to between e7 and d7. Then one player says it is on d7 and the other on e7. Whom to believe with no scoresheets and witnesses? Do we have a Solomon?

4

It sounds like the Knight is on e8 and the players agree it doesn’t belong there, one says it should be on e7 and the other says d7, so where it is now doesn’t mean much.

You made the right ruling. Not every situation can be covered in the rulebook, you sometimes must use common sense instead, and it was correct to rule in favor of the more likely series of moves, not the one that involved a Knight and Queen being en prise. Also, with no other evidence on either side, a ruling that doesn’t disturb the expected result before the dispute should be preferred over a ruling that reverses the expected result.

Bill Goichberg

5

Cut the knight in half… No, wait, that only works for babies.

–Fromper