I again ask for the wisdom and experience of the group.
For elementary age, what are your thoughts on cases where the kids call you over and ask if its checkmate/stalemate, most especially when they are wrong. I know there are different views, and I thinks there is some merit to simply saying yes or no. I usually like to turn the question back and ask the kids to tell me what it is (I find they often do know). For me, the hardest cases are where the position is stalemate but they think its checkmate since they don’t fully grasp the difference (mostly only happens in the K-1 room). Is it appropriate to simply see that’s stalemate and declare a draw? Does you answer change if the kids believe it’s checkmate?
I’m giving serious consideration to having a TD take results at the board so another possibility is that the kids call the TD over to report the result, which they report as a win, but the TD looking at the board can see it’s actually stalemate.
On “checkmate” when the player has a legal move to escape, I think we all agree that the TD can’t tell the player the move, the player ultimately needs to resign, lose on time, or find the legal move. Anyone have a different view?
Also, do people like the idea of getting results at the board? Is it disruptive to the neighboring boards?
Alex, I agree. One distinction with taking results at the board is that a TD may notice that the position is a stalemate. In cases where players report their own result they would simply mark it as a win and no one would know. By having the TD take the results, that “changes” the result to a draw. I’m confirming that others view that as correct.
I should emphasize that I’m asking these question with the assumption that Rule 11H1 Director as Witness Only is in place. So TDs are generally not correcting illegal moves that they observe.
“Is this checkmate?” and “Is this stalemate?” are two quite different questions. To me, the only person who really should be able to ask “Is this checkmate?” is the person on move. Then, I ask two questions: (1) are you in check? (2) can you find a move that gets you out of check? Note that (2) is not a question about rules—it’s not “is there a move that gets you out of check” but “can you find one”. If you can’t, well, then you lose, if not by checkmate, but by resignation.
Stalemate is a different deal, since it’s to the advantage of the player on move to not be able to find a move. I have no problem there answering with a simple yes or no, if necessary reminding the players that stalemate means that there are no legal moves, not just no legal moves with the King (which is a common source of confusion).
Procedures seem to change depending on who the chief TD is. I have worked a lot of nationals, and the answer has ranged from “yes” “no” to "what do you think (my preference), to explaining the three methods for getting out of mate. So far, I’ve not been told to correct a player’s assumption of mate.
Practice at National Scholastics since at least the 1997 Supernationals I is to give full credit to the agreement of a game’s result among the players, even if both players are incorrect.
The argument is that players need to be literate enough in the game to know these things without help. There is some merit in the argument, but it remains the mother of all rules variations.