The August 2011 Arbiter’s Notebook is interesting. The second letter poses a situation of two rooks side by side, but the player grabs the wrong rook for a capture. Guert’s ruling goes on Intent rather than Fact.
Our own 10B (Touch Move) rule could be interpreted the same way. I’m curious what our experienced directors think of this approach.
I’m inclined to consider which was touched first and rule that the rook on c1 be moved. Imagine the potential problems if someone were allowed to use an illegal move to get out of moving the piece touched first. I think this would be looking for trouble. This is not to say that the player in the linked article was trying to cheat. Having dealt with enough players with bad intentions, creating a loophole like this will eventually lead to having someone making this his backup touch move strategy.
I strongly agree. While it is unfortunate that White touched the rook on c1 rather than on d1, the language in both the FIDE Laws of Chess and the USCF Official Rules of Chess is clear. I would rule that White must move the rook on c1.
(I interpret “deliberately touches” to mean that the player did not accidentally bump or brush a piece when reaching to make a move.)
I have had players make a legal move and capture and then try to claim that their intent was to play a different move and thus touch move didn’t apply.
P.S. I ruled that it did apply.
I agree with all those who would make the player move the first piece touched, but in a case where it was really, really obvious that the player had no such intention, I would hope that most opponents would be sportsmanlike enough not to hold the player to it.
Bill Smythe
And that must be where Geurt was coming from to take the “arbiter’s discretion” that far. The context is a senior tournament; knowing that there are rules sticklers at every level, it’s my impression that senior age bracket is more inclined to the sportsmanship angle. I can’t really picture a scholastic player shrugging off an incident, even the mild mannered kids I’ve been around at local scholastics tourneys.
Or just my pessimism is showing 