I’m not saying the young kids don’t know how to notate. My son knows how, he can play a partial blindfold game using oral notation. I’m complaining that it has been FIDE approved, then not allowed. And if a child has used a monroi for the last 3 years in over 100 tournaments without writing the game down, it throws them off their normal habits and procedures. My son does chess problems where he writes the moves out on paper when training at home, but this is not the same as changing your habits for one tournament. I just feel the decision was made to get an edge for the country that doesn’t use them much.
I’m not discounting the primary argument being made here - a late arriving and probably significant rules change, which is certainly an unfortunate twist.
But just a question (maybe a ‘secondary’ point) to those who say the young kids might not be facile with manual scorekeeping. And athough I have never personally used a MonRoi: don’t these devices show the correct notation, once a move is entered? In other words, when a player enters (graphically, in a sense) that (s)he has moved the King’s Bishop to b5, doesn’t it show “3. Bb5” on it screen, which the player can simply copy verbatim on the manual scoresheet? It seems like this reduces the added burden and minimizes the likelihood of error, including keeping track of the correct number of moves.
In other words, although it might not make sense to keep score both ways, ALLOWING the players to do so (still using the MonRoi in this way) seems to reduce the burden of keeping score manually, if one is otherwise not accustomed to doing so.
This observation, again, is secondary to the main issue of the dynamics - and ethics - of late-arriving rules variations… offered only because it is unlikely (or impossible) to change that ruling, at this point - with the tournament underway.
I’ve read reviews on that particular roll up board, and from what I understand, its not quite ready for prime time. You can’t take back any moves, so if a game, for whatever reason needed to be rolled back even a single move, the board would no longer correctly register the moves.
If your playing your computer, you could take back the moves on screen, and try out different combinations, but the roll up board would be useless for that feature. It only can record moves, so you’d have to play a game out to its entirety (or start over from the beginning) to use it for analysis purposes.
Can you cite this statement for me? I’ve been looking at photos from 2008 World Youth in Vietnam and the 2009 Pan Am Youth in Argentina and I have yet to see a single MonRoi in use. Can anyone link to a photo with a MonRoi in use outside of USA and Canada?
Frankly, I can understand the confusion of the Mexican organizers when someone shows up with an electronic device that they’ve never seen before and don’t know how it works (i.e. its security functions). I also can see all of the Mexican parents–who are unfamiliar with the MonRoi–claiming that the Americans are trying to cheat with some strange electronic device. We still have that problem out here in California…
Finally, I will say that kids as smart as our top 6, 7 and 8 year old players have little trouble keeping score on a paper scoresheet, except that they may be a bit slower than adults (not an issue here). The MonRoi is a matter of convenience, both for the kids and (maybe more importantly) for the parents to quickly go over the game later on.
A Google search shows the MonRoi being introduced at some European Chess Union events in 2006, but nothing since 2007. Apparently FIDE and the ECU signed contracts with MonRoi, just like the USCF did. Despite this news, I can’t find anything about players using a MonRoi at European tournaments, certainly nothing in the last two years. Say, if I brought a MonRoi to Corus Wijk aan Zee or the Aeroflot Open, would the organizers know what the device is and let me use it?
The screen simply shows the board with the pieces on their squares (without showing the move number). You have to take an additional step to get to the move notation. Taking that additional step might raise suspicions from some people that a player is using the board to analyze (not everybody knows that the MonRoi tracks take-backs as well as actual moves, so using take-backs for anything other than entry errors is a red flag that the MonRoi may be getting used as an analysis board). Also, I’ve noticed that a kid tapping a pencil by a scorepad looks fidgety while a kid tapping a stylus by a MonRoi potentially looks suspicious.
When the MonRoi was first introduced to USCF scholastic Nationals there were a number of TDs who wanted to know what they did, so MonRoi had some representatives give some instruction in how they worked and were used. That ended up in the TDs understanding that, used properly, it was a scorekeeping device rather than an analysis device, and also ended up in the standard setting being one with option of chess rules turned OFF (so that it didn’t give players an edge by flagging illegal moves). If you use 20/20 hindsight, giving the N.A. Youth organizers and TDs that same type of instruction may have minimized the concerns, and loaning a tournament manager system, so that the settings of the MonRois in the tournament room would all have the same options, and so that the games could be broadcast live on the MonRoi site, might have had an outside chance of eliminating the scorekeeping rule announcement.
P.S. That said, I haven’t actually used a MonRoi to record any of my games even when I had the free use of them for a round or two. It would be too much of a change to my own routine to want to do it for the first time during a tournament game.
It’s too late now, but the players could have appealed the director’s decision to an appeals committee that should have been formed before the start of tournament.
FIDE doesn’t have ‘tournament directors’, it has arbiters.
Moreover, the person who apparently made the policy, Jorge Vega, FIDE Continental President for the Americas, is most likely not the chief arbiter of the event, though the chief arbiter probably reports to Mr. Vega.
Is that really an attitude you want to encourage, Tim? Sounds to me like it would promote time-wasting litigiousness, or else draconian penalties from the TD.
As for the specific question, I can’t imagine a decision like this being appealable. If a (non-handicapped) player can’t keep score in the normal manner, he doesn’t belong in a chess tournament.
This dispute undercuts one of the arguments made in favor of the Monroi, namely that allowing it would do no harm. The harm is that it’s creating a false sense of entitlement.
Actually, the lead post apparently referred to him as the ‘North American FIDE director’, which I think was an inexact reference to his post within FIDE. The word ‘arbiter’ does not appear at all.
Well I think a little slack should be cut for the American parent who may not be aware of the FIDE tournament organizational structure, titles, job descriptions, etc. Once again, that is not the point of the poster either. Double geez!!
If he can keep score in the normal manner, then exactly what is the complaint about? The right to use an expensive device he or his parents stupidly wasted money on? One of the arguments made in this thread (one of the few that made sense) was that some of the kids, having been allowed to use Monrois in all their tournaments so far, didn’t know how to keep score. Since the other arguments (based on the “right of conspicuous consumption”) seemed utterly frivolous, that was the only one I considered worth highlighting.
Stupidly, huh? Well, I guess no one else needs to comment on what disdain you have for the American chess parents who purchase this product endorsed by the USCF. Your attitude in this post speaks volumes to me. And, yes, IMO this thread is entirely about being denied the ability to use that product.
You’ve just proved my point. A Monroi is not a necessary tool for playing chess. Except in top-level tournaments which invest in the “hub” to get games for publication, it’s a frivolity. There is no “right” – in chess or elsewhere – that one be allowed to use an expensive toy. Most U.S. tournaments allow the use of a Monroi, because it does no real harm and it’s the player’s own money. This thread – and your comment – illustrate the dark side: “Gimme, gimme, gimme.”
A MonRoi can be a big time saver in analyzing games after they have been completed. Instead of having to manually re-enter moves after a game into a computer program, one can just insert an SD card and immediately start analyzing.
