Rules 14H and 14I, insufficient losing chances? Is the variation acceptable, or not?

Running Chess Tournaments
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As a new TD, I am a little uncertain about what this rule entails and if it is enforced or not.

Rule 14H and 14I are the rules of insufficient losing chances.

I think I understand the principle, e.g., a bishop and two pawns all on dark squares, vs a bishop on a light square, set up in a way that neither group can make progress, then the player who is about to run out of time can claim ILC.

Or, a player that has a queen, rook, and bishop vs an opponent with just a king and pawn, but is about to run out of time can claim ILC to avoid a loss.

If I understand correctly, this only applies in games where a clock without delay or increment are used. E.g., an old analog clock, or cheap digital one without them. Pretty rare, just about impossible thing to see these days, but okay. The best thing to do is to swap in a delay capable clock.

But what I don’t get is that the first rule of 14H is that “No claim of insufficient losing chances in sudden death will be allowed.”

But then it says “Variation 14H” which allows you to claim ILC during sudden death.

Why do I ask? Because at some of the small tournaments I have been running, the time controls are G/30;d/0, which would be sudden death, correct? If so, then if a player claims ILC during the game, with less than 2 minutes on their clock, do I honor that request, or not? Is the variation accepted, or not? Should I decide that before the tournament starts? If it is accepted, and since the game started as SD, there was no increment or delay, do I half their time and put in a delay?

I tried reading through the numerous topics on this forum, but I only became more confused.

Thanks for walking me through this.

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G/30;d0 is a sudden death time control. Any time control that isn’t followed by another time control is a sudden death time control.

You can see some examples in 5A and 5B:

In a non-sudden death time control, if both players complete the required
moves in the allotted time, a new period begins.

For example, 40/120 SD/60 indicates 40 moves in two hours (120 minutes) followed by the rest of the game in one hour (60 minutes).

So the 40/120 is not sudden death, but then SD/60 is sudden death. Your G/30 is also sudden death because there’s no following time control.

So 14H applies.

Variation 14I is, as noted, a variation. Per 1B1, any variations should be:

1B1. Notification.
Any variations from these published rules, including variations discussed in this rulebook, should be posted and/or announced at the tournament prior to their use, preferably before the first round.

The note on 14I is just that it isn’t a big enough variation that it would have to be in all publicity (for instance, say you were going to modify rule 8B to give the queen the knight’s move in addition to the normal rook+bishop move):

1B2. Major variations.
A variation sufficiently major so that it might reasonably be expected to deter some players from entering should be mentioned in any Chess Life announcement and all other detailed pre-tournament publicity and posted and/or announced at the tournament.

So, back to your question:

You’re playing a sudden death control. You don’t have to allow a claim of insufficient losing chances unless you a) want to and b) announce it at some point before it comes up.

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Excellent, thanks! So as long as I plan to not allow a claim of ILC, I don’t have to advertise that, because by default it cannot be claimed unless I announced it first, right?

I’m probably overstating the obvious here, I just want to be clear that if a player asked me about it, I would be completely justified in kindly explaining that claims of ILC are not allowed in sudden death time controls unless that was specified before the event.
(This has not happened, I just wanted to get some advice head of time on this rule.)

4

Correct.

In theory someone could ask you if they could use this variation and you could announce it at practically any point, but realistically you should announce prior to the first round per 1B1.

It’s a fairly terrible draw claim in a timed event (after all, this is what clocks are for, to allow people to lose games they would win if they had unlimited time) in my opinion, but makes some more sense when you consider that at least some tournaments 20-30 years ago used to be repeating 20/60 (or similar) time controls forever.

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5

Opinions vary, but I think d0 is the worst possible choice for an increment/delay setting. But of course if most of your players don’t have delay/increment capable clocks, that might be a reason to use it.

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6

Curious as to where the opinions range. I prefer delay over increment and about a 5 second delay to minimize time scrambles even if it’s counting down pretty fast, so would prefer G/25;d5 to G/30;d0. I’ve heard some pleas for increment but haven’t gotten a great idea as to why it would be preferable at the i30 / d30 level yet.

Might be better in a different thread, I guess.

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As of today, 167 affiliates have held events in calendar 2024 that had ‘d0’ in the time control field. 7 of them have held more than 30 such events.

The breakdown of ‘d0’ events by ratings system is:

sec_rtgsys count
---------- -----

BL           462
Dual         374
Qk           154
Reg           33
OLQ           31
OLB           13
OLR           11
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8

Our blitz tournament we had in April was G/5;d0, pincipally because the rule book suggested that if no time control is given, blitz is assumed to be G/5;d0.

As for the G/30;d0 round robins I have been running, the library has very strict times for using the study rooms. G/30 will always be exactly 1 hour or less for a game, allowing us to complete the three rounds for sure on time. If I use G/25;d5, it should be 60 minutes or less for a game, but in theory could go long if they make moves in faster than 5 seconds. Last event we had, they were down to 30 seconds on the clock for a few folks in some rounds.

Both would still meet the goal of being dual rated (needed for several players trying to establish ratings in both categories). But I should probably try the G/25;d5 to see how that works out. I just worry about any rounds going long.

I would suppose most d0 groups do so because it is really easy to determine the round times. Just my (inexperienced) thoughts. :grinning:

9

Thread meandering, er, hijacking, seems pretty common around here. :rofl:

Doesn’t bother me any.

At least with delay they can’t gain time, I personally hate it when:

I am winning on time ( for once :laughing: ) and my oponnent is able to add time to the clock with worthless moves.

At least with delay, there is no point in back and forth moves to gain time. Just my opinion as a player.

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G/5;d0 for blitz is perfectly reasonable. Quite a few people prefer that to similar delay or increment time controls as in blitz clock management is almost as important as chess moves.

We had(?) one regular poster who extolled the virtues of G/30;d0, but he was running scholastic tournaments, and for most kids rated under 800 or so will rarely come anywhere close to using G/30. I wouldn’t be particularly concerned about running over at G/25;d5 vs G/30;d0. In a large tournament (100’s of boards), you can pretty much count on some game each round running into “delay clock time” (over 60 minutes in this case), but in a smallish tournament, it’s unlikely. Remember that you only get to 60 minutes at G/25;d5 if both players get down to fumes and play at least 60 moves on which they use the 5 seconds. Most players once they are under 30 seconds main time will start making quite a few moves quicker than 5 seconds.

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11

I haven’t played Blitz in a long time, but G/5 was what we played at the Lincoln Chess Club (pre increment/delay era), and I’ve never played G/3;d2 of G/3;+2 so I can’t really comment on them. (It does seem to be one of those issues where people have a firm if not adamant preference for either d0 or d2/+2, though.)

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I am a player who will not play at all without significant increment or at minimum with the 14H USCF rule in effect. For me score sheets are a high priority for several reasons, to establish 3 fold repetitions, etc., and increment=zero is a very bad time control for players who want to encourage players to learn notation and keep good score sheets. Not long ago I played in a quad tournament that unfortunatly had a time control of G/30 zero increment, in spite of my strong opinion that time controls should be such that writing every move on the scoresheet is required, which means 30 second increment. Because of the zero increment, I studied the 14H rule carefully prior to the event, just in case I encountered time pressure with less than 2 minutes remaining and had an obviously drawn position. Sure enough, in one of my games I ended up with a 14H draw successfully claimed with only 1 second remaining on my clock. The position was a simple drawn K+one pawn vs. K where my K was blocking the pawn. My opponent had never heard of rule 14H and the TD had to look it up before finally confirming the draw claim was valid.

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13

I wouldn’t run this tournament.

As I understand this, and my rulebook is in another state as I type, that a deferred 14H claim is met by reducing the claimant’s time, and adding a clock with the published delay (as well as offering the opponent a draw). The important part of this is that a G/30;d0 time control does not, as I understand it, allow the defer option because the added delay would be zero seconds.

And, if you disagree with my solution, what delay would you use and why?

If the site has time restrictions, as most do, reduce the base time, reduce the number of rounds, use a smaller than expected delay (say G/28;d2), but don’t run a tournament without a delay or increment. You really don’t want to have a game, and a regularly rated game at that, with K+Q+Q vs. K+P and the second player somehow win because the first doesn’teven have reaction time.

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14

There are 4 ways a director can respond to a claim. I will ignore the “claim is clearly correct / incorrect” options and focus on “The claim is unclear.”

14H2a. The claim is unclear and a delay clock is available for the game.
A director who believes the claim is neither clearly correct (14H2c) nor clearly incorrect (14H2d), but is instead uncertain as to the correctness of the claim, may place a delay clock on the game, setting it as follows: The claimant gets half of the claimant’s remaining time (rounded to the nearest second); the opponent’s time is unadjusted; the time delay is set for the standard delay announced at the start of the tournament. After the claimant’s clock is started, the Variation 14H draw request by the claimant becomes a draw offer under 14B3, Draw offer before moving. Penalties for rule infractions remain standard. The claimant may win, lose, or draw the game.

I don’t see why you could not implement this, but it would be pointless in an environment where the “standard delay” is 0 seconds, yes. This is, of course, why allowing Variation 14H is a terrible plan.

But, all that notwithstanding, you have the final options:

14H2b. The claim is unclear and a delay clock is not available for the game.
A director who believes the claim is neither clearly correct (14H2c) nor clearly incorrect (14H2c), but is uncertain as to the correctness of the claim, and does not have a delay clock available, may:

  1. Deny the claim while inviting a later re-claim. There is no adjustment of either player’s time. After the claimant’s clock is started, the Variation 14H draw request by the claimant becomes a draw offer under 14B3, Draw offer before moving. Penalties for rule infractions remain standard. The claimant may win, lose, or draw the game.
  2. Watch the game while reserving judgment on the claim. The director should make every effort to resolve the claim before the flag of either player falls (5G). There is no adjustment of either player’s time. After the claimant’s clock is started, the Variation 14H draw request by the claimant also becomes a draw offer under under 14B3, Draw offer before moving. Penalties for rule infractions remain standard. The claimant may win, lose, or draw the game.

So in your instance the TD could watch until they thought the claim became more obvious under 14H2b.2.

…but seriously, just don’t allow claims of insufficient losing chances in sudden death, particularly in a ;d0 game.

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15

There has always been a disagreement (in practice) over what you were “watching” for. FIDE’s analog to 14H had the phrase “not trying to win by normal means” (i.e. simply playing clock) for uploading a draw claim, but that doesn’t appear in the US Chess rules, and, in fact, the Master vs C player standard supposedly still governs. So if the two players tack around for ten moves and nothing of significance has happened and there’s a re-claim, you should (as TD) be stuck with the same decision. Except I suspect most TD’s would probably grant the drawn claim by (in effect) using the FIDE version of the rule.

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Well, yes, 14H2b is also possible. Far better to not run d0 events, excepting possibly G/5;d0 events. I can agree with Mr. Campbell to the extent that players who are unprepared to provide a properly set delay/increment clock should be SOL when it comes to ILC.

But find a way around d0 events!

US Chess ID 12498726. US Chess National Tournament Director, FIDE and ICCF International Arbiter

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