Here is another neat trick. Touch the piece you want to move. Then back off and touch another. Wait for the opponent to call “Touch Move”. Stop the clocks and let him go hunt for the TD. That should take about 10 minutes in some venues. This allows you to think some more about the position while your opponent is away from the board. When he comes back all flustered with a TD in tow, admit you touched the first piece, apologise profusely, and make your move. Your opponent will be too rattled to think properly for a while. Heard about this one at a national scholastic tournament.
And people wonder why tournament chess is in decline. 
I am thankful to have played mostly gentlemanly players over the board thru the years.
I don’t get it. There is no touch-move claim until you actually move the second piece. If you stopped the clocks, why would he go hunt for the TD? If you had made a move with a piece other than the one first touched, shouldn’t there be a penalty assessed? There are too many things wrong with this scenario.
Alex Relyea
He did say it was a trick.
While I understand there can be exceptions (especially at scholastic tournaments), it is first up to the opponent to claim the behavior is annoying, and only then up to the TD to rule on it one way or the other.
In my opinion, if the opponent didn’t claim it was annoying (or at least not until the game was over), that’s not a determination I as a TD need to make.
No matter what rule you come up with to prevent this kind of (or any) behavior, someone will find a way to “game” the system. The challenge is that the rule makers are not of the same frame of mind as the rule breakers; i.e., dishonorable.
Indeed. The sad thing is that if he heard about that “trick” at a scholastic, it’s probable that he learned it from a coach. Very unfortunate.
Regarding the situation from the OP, of course the rule book is quite clear on the subject, but it might help to also understand why the rule book is quite clear on the subject. Why is it that we have the touch move rule in the first place?
The ability to “look ahead” is of course a huge factor in Chess, and the ability to visualize future moves makes it easier to plan. If I could, when I was thinking, I might pick up a piece and move it to another square just so it would be that much easier to plan my moves. The reason for the touch move rule is to prevent that.
There can’t be any advantage to picking up an moving a piece if there is no legal move that that piece can make, so, other than the annoyance rule, there’s no reason to penalize a player who touches, but does not move,apiece that cannot legally move.
Thanks to everyone for their comments. It helped to get confirmation of what I thought (but wasn’t confident) was the right ruling from experienced TDs, but Black also appreciated that not everyone agreed. Not that he thought White was intentionally engaging in gamesmanship, just an acknowledgement that such action can throw one off their game, especially when time is short.
It’s amazing how carefully written rules that have evolved over centuries can still have some play in them. The rules do state that should you touch an opponent’s man, you must capture it if you can do so legally. However, it is too big a leap of logic to extend this to say that you must move the only piece that could, almost, capture the touched one.
Donald MacMurray, in a 1933 article in Chess Review, tells this story:
I’ve heard of a number of tricks being tried at the national scholastics. Depending on the severity, deceptiveness, and unsportsmanship of the trick, the penalty for making the attempt has ranged up to and including loss of game and/or ejection from the tournament.
I’ve also heard of a number of claims by people that thought an opponent was attempting a trick, but further review determined that was not the case.