I’m just curious here, but can people please post rules where the US Chess rule is superior to that under the FIDE laws of chess? I’m having a difficult time coming up with any.
Alex Relyea
That would be a matter of opinion, rule by rule, of course.
Time was when FIDE rules were grossly inferior. See USCF’s Official Rules of Chess, 1st or 2nd edition, by Martin Morrison, from the middle to late 1970s. Those editions quoted a lot of FIDE rules. The FIDE versions were godawful.
Nowadays, however, I think we’d hard put to find more than a handful of examples where the USCF rule might be considered superior to FIDE. Food for thought.
Bill Smythe
And it may depend on the type of event.
For example - You lose if you are not there at the start of the game? For a small club event? Really?
And the role of the arbiter in calling rules violations is simply unworkable given the size of many of our events in relation to the number of TDs available - and I don’t mean there I mean available at all.
This is the trend, for sure, and thought experiments that stem from debates like the one I had over KNN vs. K+P lean in the FIDE direction, for those who dig theoretical purity. It’s kind of funny when you consider that recent FIDE regs have made it much harder for USCF-rated events to also be FIDE-rated. (USATE, US Open, etc.)
“Superior” is relative. What works best for a scholastic event, or a G/30 club quad or a large weekend Swiss with minimal TD staffing, might not be what works best for an event that could plausibly be FIDE Standard-rated. That’s how USCF rules came about in the first place, as I understand it.
I could live with FIDE rules for all USCF events as of date xxx with one exception: flag fall. It is blatantly unfair for TDs to call a flag on a board they observe, while not calling it another board, which they did not observe because there are not enough TDs to go around. In practice, we could avoid this by making 30-second increment the de facto standard—but what about one-day events at G/30? (Not to mention the world championship does not use increment before move 61.)
If FIDE allowed Standard-rated events to be played under the special rules listed for Rapid events—arbiters do not call flags if the number of players is 6x the number of arbiters, plus other tweaks that resemble how most USCF Regular-rated SD games are played—then I could sign on to the merge with LOC movement.
If I win the lottery and decide to organize chess events to fill my time, I might try to run some G/45, Inc-10 events that are USCF Dual-rated and FIDE Rapid-rated, using the amended Rapid rules. I suspect someone who did this right would do quite well for himself and players hungry for rated chess (and a FIDE rating of some kind) at semi-civilized controls that can still end in one day.
I once started a thread asking how local rated events are run in other nations. It drew almost no response. As far as I know, the following are unique to USA/USCF:
5-second delay as de facto standard; delay much more common than increment; Regular (or equivalent) rating system starts at G/30 or G/25d5; extremely active scholastic chess scene, mostly at G/30 and with many absolute beginners; active circuit of large weekend Swisses, with large cash prizes to class and Under section winners and in some cases minimal TD staff.
Not sure if all that is true, but I’ve not seen evidence of these things in other countries. For that reason, it might be that FIDE LOC work for them, but as long as we allow/promote all of the above, we need amended rules in the USA.
We could debate whether we should allow or promote all of the above, but that’s another thread.
The USCF will allow some pairing changes within limitations to avoid intra-school or intra-club pairings in large events. FIDE will require a natural father vs son pairing or brother vs sister pairing to stay that way.
In one tournament with a prize fund over $10K there was a master son and an expert father paired in the final round with both players in the running for noticeable prize money. Any result that resulted in either player winning money would be deemed by some players to be due to collusion. A simple transposition of less than 20 points was available to change that pairing, but FIDE would have required keeping that pairing and the very high chance that collusion would be suspected.
The USCF will allow round-robin rounds to be played in an altered sequence, or games to be deferred. In a club setting with multi-week events this is useful when two players are going to both be gone the same week. That week’s normal round can be swapped with the one where they play each other and their game can be deferred (or accelerated if they play it the weekend in advance).
The USCF allows merging schedules with different time controls in the pre-merge part of the schedules.
The USCF will allow something other than 40 moves for the first time control.
If we were to reverse the rule requiring clocks to not halt on end, then I don’t see this as a problem. If I were to walk by your board five minutes after your flag had fallen, assuming halt-on-end, then I could call your flag with no detriment to your opponent because I wasn’t there when the flag fell. The only people who would be hurt by inadequate supervision are those who would allow themselves to get stalemated or checkmated with the opponent’s flag down and those using analog clocks. The latter, IMO, deserve what they get.
Alex Relyea
Most or all of these are in the FIDE Handbook but not in the actual LOC, right? By “rules” I think LOC.
In Iceland this past winter there were two brothers in a (norm?) round robin. After the lots were drawn the round in which the brothers were due to play was accelerated to the first round to reduce collusion claims.
Alex Relyea
The USCF will only go back ten moves (two moves in some circumstances) to correct an illegal move while FIDE will go all the way back to move one. (you may see more gamesmanship with players overlooking an opponent’s early illegal move so that it can be referred to if needed after seeing how the game is going - could be really fun in a scholastic event where the taking of notation is often inexact but may be the only evidence available).
The USCF will allow any type of notation while FIDE requires only algebraic. (I still use descriptive)
I wonder if there was pre-arranged agreement for that change. I thought the USCF has had norms disallowed based on rounds being played in a non-standard order.
Your first example is specified by “the rules of the competition” in FIDE now, the default is no longer zero tolerance.
6.7
The rules of a competition shall specify in advance a default time. Any player who arrives at the chessboard after the default time shall lose the game unless the arbiter decides otherwise.
If the rules of a competition specify that the default time is not zero and if neither player is present initially, White shall lose all the time that elapses until he arrives, unless the rules of the competition specify or the arbiter decides otherwise.
And your second example is often cited as the major reason FIDE rules are “unworkable” in large swisses. This is just not true. In FIDE rules an arbiter must call a violation if he or she witnesses it, but that is not the only way violations are claimed. The players can (and should) still claim violations (flag falls, illegal moves, etc.) when there is no arbiter present. There is no need for an arbiter at every table in a FIDE rated tournament!
6.8
A flag is considered to have fallen when the arbiter observes the fact or when either player has made a valid claim to that effect.
(etc.)
There are many large swisses run using FIDE rules; Gibraltar, Moscow, our own National Open (the Open and U2200 sections), World Open, etc.
It’s time to retire that outdated viewpoint regarding FIDE rules.
-Matt Phelps
I believe (but I am not certain) there is a proposal to change the FIDE Laws of Chess to restrict correction of an illegal move to the previous ten moves.
I believe it would be possible to ask the FIDE Qualification Commission (QC) to approve such a change in the order of rounds in a norm tournament.
I believe the restriction on the order of rounds and on all games being played at the same time only applies to norm events. I believe (but am not certain) that for non-norm round robins, there is more flexibility for the chief arbiter to exercise his discretion.
The pairing rules Jeff cites are significant differences. Those differences are used notably in our national scholastics and less notably in scholastic events all over the country.
In many large events the issue of different/merged schedules is why events are not being FIDE rated. Changing US Chess rules to match that issue is a non-starter.
There is still the issue that most FIDE events have a much higher ratio of arbiters to players. In part as a result there has been a much larger bias to arbiter intervention than in USCF events where the TDs ratio is generally lower. It can raise significant questions of fairness and favoritism to change the USCF basic premise that TDs are not involved unless requested.
I would agree that it is an inconsistent practice. If people know of the inconsistent practice when they enter, it is not blatantly unfair.
Agreed with Kevin. If I am cited for a speeding violation, it’s irrelevant that someone else was going as fast as I did, yet wasn’t cited.
Neither of these issues are parts of the Laws of Chess. They are part of the Swiss Pairings Rules and Rating Regulations.
This is the problem again of putting everything into the soup and calling it the USCF Rules of Chess (or whatever the exact title it).
We should be separating the concepts out into their own standalone aspects.
+1
The first step in preparing the 7th edition of the USCF rulebook should be to organize the various topics in the exact same way FIDE has done. There could be chapters parallel to the Laws of Chess, Competition Rules, Pairings, and whatever else FIDE has.
If we did that, we just might find that, in at least some of these areas (like Laws of Chess), there is little, if any, good reason to differ from FiDE.
Bill Smythe
Increment will now be in force from move 1 for all major FIDE events. fide.com/component/content/ … vents.html
I pulled this out of my overlong screed upthread. To me this is the issue. Is the way we play OTB rated chess below top level in USCF so different than other countries and FIDE events that we need our own rules set to make it work?
Dunno. Waiting for more informed people, with more experience of organized chess in other nations, to chime in. This could be a great thread.