Pardon this question from the dark ages: Do the electronic devices actually show the position, with the pieces distributed on the 64 squares? I’ve seen the gadgets but never looked closely enough as they are of no interest to me. I assumed they had blank screens where the operator touched e2-e4 to move any piece from e2 to e4.
If MonRoi actually shows the position it should never have been approved for obvious reasons. Too late now though, I suppose.
It does, and that is why the move has to be completed on the board before it can be recorded on such a machine. Also, the machine must be set to have illegal-move-detection turned off.
This requirement is just plain stupid, stupid, stupid. What on earth could be wrong with the scoresheet software preventing an illegal move?
I’m betting dollars to donuts that the vast majority of my opponents who have used these devices have had illegal move detection turned on (though I have never asked, nor cared).
For one thing, what about castling? The standard method for entering this move is simply to move the king (e.g. from e1 to g1). The device then moves the rook for you. With illegal move detection turned off, how does the device know you wanted to castle? It might instead prefer to allow the illegal move Ke1-g1. So it would have to be able to detect an illegal move, at least in this particular instance.
Bill Smythe
Because it would give assistance to the player that the paper scoresheet player would not have. Perfect example last night in a rated game an unintentional illegal move was made when one player was under time pressure (less than 5 minutes) but the other player continued to notate on his device and simply made the illegal move and didn’t catch it until later that night when he was uploading and converting it to a pgn file.
It probably wouldn’t have won him the game had he noticed at the time but the potential is definately there especially with the touch move rule.
In this case the illegal move was moving a King that was in check to another square that left it in check.
When the Monroi people had a workshop with the device shortly before the first scholastic national in which they were used (and after the device had already been approved) that was the second issue that the various NTDs brought up (to the surprise of the Monroi representatives). The first was making sure that changing a move left a record (to ensure that using it as an analysis device would be readily detectable by going into scoresheet mode). I think the third issue was making sure that the tournament organizer managing unit could push the desired settings to all Monroi in the tournament hall (eliminating the need for the TDs to have to go check the settings on each individual unit).
My mind is going. I have seen these up close. I once had to tell a little kid to stop diddling with the thing.
Not to prolong a discussion that was more appropriate several years ago, but this is a VERY, VERY bad idea. Forget about re-creating a live position, which is bad enough. Gadgets force opponents and nearby players into the role of policeman.
They never will be banned – I can imagine the lawsuits – but whoever approved this should be ashamed.
Causing someone to realize that an illegal move was made as soon after it occurs, is a good thing. The sooner it is discovered and corrected, the sooner a game marred by an illegal move can be brought back into being a legally played game, with the least muss and fuss.
PS to Bill Smythe: Your observation about illegal move detection, and castling, shows the subtlety of such issues. Nice catch!
I think the problem arises out of the preceived unfairness of just having the illegal move detector on some of the games( the ones with electronic scorekeeping devices) By not allowing it the rules makers were probably trying to keep a level playing field.
The rules makers just had their heads in the sand.
An electronic scorekeeping device should have been regarded as simply the first step on the road to a fully automated tournament game. The next step would be to replace the standard board, either with a sensory board or with a pair of computer screens, that would automatically keep a record of the game, disallow illegal moves, keep track of clock times, and rule on draw claims by triple occurrence or 50 moves.
Disallowing illegal move detection is simply a step in the wrong direction – about 180 degrees wrong.
Bill Smythe
Bill, are you proposing to remove the penalty for making an illegal move? As long as the penalty is in place, it is an unfair advantage for a player using an electronic scoresheet to have the scoresheet inform him/her that it is time to call the TD over and penalize his/her opponent while the player using written notation has to do it themselves. And we’ve ALL seen plenty of illegal moves go unnoticed by both players during a game. (My personal recent favorite was trying to reconstruct a game where both players showed black having played Bishop from c8 to g4 without having first moved the Queen pawn from d7.)
We can already do that–remember the pictures from the Amber chess tournament? Everyone can bring their laptops and log into the same chess server. Sets wouldn’t be necessary.
But then again, why would anyone have to go to a tournament?
There also exists the possibility of the player with the electronic device making the illegal move and having to call it on him or herself, with all the possible penalties, including touch move.
Agreed, the move must be completed before being recorded. Now more so than ever, due to electronics.
The USCF Delegates unwisely made a big push in mid-2000’s to deviate from FIDE and common sense chess rules by allowing players to record their move before touching the piece on the real board. They won the vote, although the limit was only one record-erase-record cycle per turn before touching the piece; meaning 60 such r-e-r cycles per game was legal.
This violation of the no-note-taking principle leads to several problems, and the modern electronics bring those problems more fully into view. Any electronic notation device that shows piece icons on a board, and which allows taking back any “accidental” move, it a blatant problem; because it enables the user to test/see other non-actual positions that are extremely similar to the game’s current position.
I have lost track of the USCF rule changes in this area, because the USCF still allows the McKay publishing company its strangle-hold on USCF’s ability to post its own rules cleanly online.
The principle of no-note-taking should be strong in the USCF rules. Recording any non-completed move is unacceptable note-taking, always has been.
MonRoi and enotate and ynotate all suffer the flaw of showing pieces on a board, I think. A cellphone app like enotate except that would not display pieces on a board could be developed any time, so there need not be validity to the idea that chess tournament players will say — “But I spent $100 for this app or device and now I cannot even use it??”.
Agreed.
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You guys still have your heads in the sand.
This is new technology. The idea should be to make use of it, not to suppress it. If one player wants to put himself at a disadvantage by sticking with paper, that’s his choice.
An illegal move should be thought of, not as an act that needs to be punished, but as an accident that ought to be prevented.
And to go even further, by suggesting that the notation device should not even be allowed to display the current position, can only be described as ostrich extremism.
Bill Smythe
Not all players would be that honest. Consider this situation. White makes an illegal move. If the illegal move is called he will be forced to lose his queen because of the touch move rule. Luckily for him, Black doesn’t notice that it’s an illegal move. Black is using a Monroi. If the Monroi doesn’t allow Black to enter the illegal move it will tip Black off that the move is illegal.
Now consider the same scenario except that White is the one using the Monroi. White tries to enter the illegal move and the Monroi won’t allow it. What will White do? If White is honest he’ll tell Black that his last move was illegal, and most likely suffer the consequences of having to lose his queen. If White is dishonest he’ll pretend to enter the move anyway, pretend to enter moves as the game continues, and hope that he isn’t caught.
Using an electronic scoresheet that doesn’t allow illegal moves to be entered gives a (dishonest) player an advantage over a player not using an electronic scoresheet.
Bill is on the right track. It’s disheartening to see all the people who want to ban electronic scorekeeping devices because one player uses his to cheat. But they have real advantages, with export of machine-readable files and possible support for game broadcast.
Virtually all of them seem to be in the hands of kids (those which have well-to-do parents), and they’re the trend of the future. As an aside, I had an eight-year-old kid - bright but obnoxious - tell me he could record moves in advance because Bobby Fischer did it. (And he was using a MonRoi!) I told him the rules have changed since Bobby’s time.
Over-the-board chess is at serious risk of becoming a niche, irrelevant to the majority of players who are exclusively online. The rules have to be developed and socialized, just as we’ve gone through huge changes with the end of adjournments and digital timekeeping.
There are important questions to reconsider; whether electronic devices should support illegal moves or signal repetitions and 50-move situations. In addition, there should be guidelines to judge how much backtracking is suspect. Developers should be engaged to evaluate the feasibility of logging keystrokes - and perhaps datestamping, to identify backdating of the record.
This is one where, even as the creator of a e-scoresheet, would fight against, because then the player using the e-scoresheet is then getting assistance from the device. People using manual scoresheets have to count for the 50 moves and have to manually look for triple repetition of position.
Having the equipment – whether a sensory board, pair of computer screens, or e-scoresheet – be able to rule on draw claims, would be a highly desirable long-term goal. Granted, it would be a bit much at the present time, with such a mixture of old and new equipment currently in use.
Bill Smythe
I guess it would be advantage-neutral if notifications of illegal moves, 50-move-rule and triple-repetition were audible-only so that the opponent could also hear it. However you would have to worry about scoresheet owners turning the sound off or setting it very low (or having an annoyance if a number of such devices were sounding of regularly - particularly if the two players were each still trying to win in a 50-move-rule situation with the device sounding out every half-move).
Electronic scoresheets are definitely here to stay. We need to get comfortable with them, and figure out how they can be made more affordable (like eNotate) and less susceptible to dishonest use (like MonRoi). They do present a number of differences with traditional written notation that I find to be serious advantages. In fact, I am playing in a G/29 event on Saturday; I’m going to use my eNotate there, precisely because of some of those advantages.
Just because the technology exists, though, does not necessarily mean that it should be used as much as possible. Many games/sports have equipment restrictions in place, precisely because they would change the fundamental nature of the game in question, either in terms of gameplay (as in golf’s restrictions on clubhead size) or safety (as in baseball’s ban on aluminum bats at the professional level).
I would not go so far as to allow electronic scoresheets to warn of illegal moves, or rule on draw claims. I happen to believe that a scoresheet should be completely neutral, and should only display the list of moves and their associated move numbers. I like the fact that illegal moves can be entered on an electronic scoresheet. I don’t believe players should get any advantage during a game from using an electronic scoresheet other than speed of move entry.