So, how goes the task of merging USCF rules with the FIDE LOC? The 2014 USATE should be interesting.
Yes Gene, a warning. Let me know when you have a way to prove the player was cheating. The warning is a necessary step in the escalation cycle – after a warning then the appearance of cheating can reasonably be sanctioned. I kind of take 1C2b seriously unless I have a concrete reason to think otherwise.
Moving on…
Yeah…I don’t see the sky falling.
Too bad for you the Rules Committee doesn’t agree that an electronic scoresheet not utilize a diagram. Dollars to donuts, complaints about electronic scoresheets are taken seriously.
The making and remaking of rules goes on forever. I was describing a chessic value, whether in or out of fashion with the current rules.
Bringing the screen back up repeatedly for Enotate would cause less batterylife on the device.
Recording their own move is only after they move. Recording the opponent’s move I suppose could happen at any time, although one anticipates it after the opponent’s move.
So there doesn’t seem to be a need to fiddle with it. A warning for first fiddling seems reasonable although a forfeiture for a clear violation also seems reasonable.
For what it’s worth, the suspect player in the original question in this thread was caught last weekend running Pocket Fritz on his Dell PDA during a game. This is outside the scope of the claim I described, and the matter has been referred to the Ethics Committee.
Discussions like this do raise awareness among TDs of the practical concerns - as well as capturing a variety of divergent opinions. It was surprising to me to see even highly experienced TDs uncertain about how to determine when conduct crosses the line.
TDs are like economists - place them all end-to-end, and you’ll never reach a conclusion. 
When it comes to electronic scoresheets, the truth is that we’re all kind of learning as we go. These discussions do help, and I think they will go some way toward shaping how we deal with the evolution of this technology. The one thing I’m certain of is that electronic scoresheets aren’t going away. Hypotheticals like the one you presented help all directors think through the issues - and benefits - they present.
I prefer the joke that economics professors give the same final exam every year - they just change the answers.
That’s sad. I hope that the result is done in such a way to keep the player appropriately in chess. Without naming names, publication of such offenses might help to discourage future attempts or “errors.”
I recently just started getting back into playing - and I found myself “annoyed” at having to take the time to reenter my tournament games into my database. So I purchased a used Windows Mobile PDA on Ebay, (it doesn’t even have wifi though it has bluetooth which I leave off to conserve battery life) and installed Enotate on an SD card. My thought was when the tournament was done I could just pull the files into he database. (I haven’t actually used this arrangement yet.) I was concerned about the possible perception of cheating, so I’ve made a point of keeping it a dedicated device. Other than what comes with the OS there is no other software on the device other than Enotate.
I hope that we can find a good, practical way to deal with situations like the one you describe, because software like Enotate that freezes out other programs from being run is immensely more cost-effective than a dedicated device like Monroi, and for me the time savings to transfer the games is definitely worth the reduced cost. Perhaps players will simply be subject to random checks that they are using Enotate (or eventually other approved software.) If so - “Enotate” and an emblem should probably make a point of being clearly visible on every screen that a player might legitimately be on during a game. If the player needs to do something else, he/she will know that they must do itin the presence of a TD.
I’d prefer a Grand Unification Theory of rules, so that everything can be reduced to one rule
I’ve stopped teaching the actual writing of moves before the move. I’ve tried a couple of other approaches - pretending to write the move, or closing eyes, and counting backwards from 10 or some such. I haven’t yet decided what I prefer.
In regards to tap-tap-tap… I did that myself once, this past Monday night.
Because eNotate does allow a player to make an illegal move (as it should,) I had to reverse backwards to find out where I messed up and replace it. (As was mentioned earlier, the equivalent of scratching out an incorrect move and replacing it.) In fact, I couldn’t figure out the error, so I played out the rest of my game (a loss,) then I borrowed my opponent’s scoresheet to go back and make the correction after the game.
(Those illegal moves make importing the game to ChessBase problematic… But it still saves me time - I make far far far fewer notation errors with eNotate. And it is a big plus when one is publishing all the games of a tournament to save the re-entry time.)
As far as normal operating parameters, I’m going to see if I can make a short (under ten minute) video which demonstrates normal operation during a game (with screenshots and/or video capture) of both eNotate and MonRoi. If I have time in YouTube’s parameters I might go on to show behavior which should around suspicion. It may take a few weeks, but I think it would be a valuable resource.
That’s an idea which Adam Chrisney suggested elsewhere. He mentioned showing what Pocket Fritz looks like, in comparison with eNotate. I can describe behavior which should arouse suspicion: a player keeping the device in front of him, leaning over the board while he covers it with his hands. That comes from my recent experience.
All the talk about what Fritz looks like is pointless in my opinion. There are dozens of programs available for playing chess. For that matter, the source code for a very good program is freely available and a moderately competent programmer could easily write his own interface that looks like whatever he wanted. It’s just not hard at all. So being able to distinguish between Fritz and a notation program is really not all that reassuring. When a programmer can make the playing program look like whatever he wants you really have to be much more clever and thorough to catch a cheater using such a program.
“Pointless” is much too harsh a judgment. There’s always a risk that a determined, sophisiticated cheater will devise a disguise that frustrates easy detection. But the scheme that started this topic wasn’t high-tech. Many people suspected this individual of cheating for a long time, even while it went on under the noses of TDs up to the National level. A little bit of instruction on the simple techniques that are widely available - and should be obvious - would substantially enhance the protection we can provide to our law-abiding players.
You’re probably right. Most cheaters are looking for the easy way to win, after all. But it does give a false sense of security to talk about what Fritz looks like without also discussing just how easy it would be to create a different looking chess program.
It’s just so easy; I don’t understand why we’d allow general purpose PDA’s to be used in a chess tournament. It’s ridiculous.
A special purpose piece of hardware that at least claims to have some security features should be OK. The amount of time it would take to hack a reasonably secure piece of hardware is probably at least a whole order of magnitude more difficult. Even then, for the absolute top competitions, they should only be allowed if the organizer provides them. Given enough incentive, even “secure” hardware will be hacked (look at the way satellite TV access cards were hacked, for example).
This discussion has led me to conclude that the scoresheet prescribed for the competition (15A) at the Third Annual Fairfax Open will be the USCF carbonless duplicate scoresheet, which I will provide to all players for all games. Further, the manner required by the director for reporting results (15H) will be the return of a completed, countersigned duplicate scoresheet.
This isn’t unreasonable. The only question that leaps to mind is whether you are also prohibiting the use of any other scoresheet, electronic or otherwise. (Please note that I wouldn’t have a problem with either scenario; just asking for the sake of clarification.)
Barring a persuasive case for accommodation, such as a visually impaired player who needs a two-dimensional representation to process the position, I do not intend to permit the use of any other score sheet during the game.
Players are still welcome to record their games via MonRoi, eNotate, score book, ChessBase, or even Houdini operated by another with moves communicated via a Phonito–AFTER they have finished the game.
Good luck with that. I’d imagine you’ll have a lot of complaints from players who are used to doing it a different way.
Alex Relyea
Have thought about it, but I’m not so sure. Really, what’s the difference between one medium of scorekeeping and the other, particularly the (still predominant) pen and paper methods?
I just think that, assuming that the first and second Fairfax Opens were similar to most of the tournaments I organize and direct, you’ll get a lot of pushback from players wanting to use their own scorebooks and write up the results of the games on the pairing charts.
Alex Relyea