I would like to get a general idea as to what percentage of clubs are following the new rule regarding the recording of moves after they are made.
Aside from when a MonRoi is being used, is your club following the old rule (recording of the move before you make it) or the new rule (recording of the move after you make)?
We has a tournament last Saturday with 19 players. I announced the rule and asked eveyone to follow it, but also said at this point in time there would be no penalties for breaking the rule. The subject never came up again after that.
We had a tournament a couple weeks ago where the TD did the same thing, with the same results. I did remind one of my opponents about it once, correctly believing he hadn’t been in the room when the TD made the announcement. He slipped a couple times after that, but I didn’t make an issue of it. He went on to win the section 5-0.
I was at the Scholastic Chess of Indiana state individual tournament this past Saturday. I was on the floor as a TD, I announced the rule change to all players in the upper sections. I also said that I wouldn’t impose any penalties this year. I had players complain to me about 5 times that their opponent was recording their move first before moving. This wasted only a short amount of my time. It was not a big deal. Like anything else change is a process. I am sure over time everyone will get used to it. Not one player of the about 240 in the sections I supervised used a MonRoi.
I don’t think a single TD in Northern California is enforcing the new scorekeeping rule. In fact, most of the active TDs have made a specific point not to enforce it. (I only know of one player who uses a MonRoi.)
Michael Aigner
I am not aware of any clubs in South Florida that are using the new rule.
At my own club I have not been. In my club there are scholastic players that are participating in with the adults. The Scholastic Council is not following the new rule for the National Scholastics. If I followed the new rule, the scholastic players in my club could be at a disadvantage when it comes to the Nationals. I may start enforcing the new rule after the last scholastic national in the spring.
At the one event I ran since the rule kicked in we made our announcement about how we intended to enforce the rule. The general reaction was: “huh? There was a rule change?” Unless it effects them directly I have observed that most players are blissfully unaware of most of the rules.
Tim
So far, I’ve basically been ignoring the new rule in my tournaments here in
Pittsburgh. If someone complains, I’ll tell the opponent what they should be
doing, but will also tell both players that for now there will be no
penalties (much like warning players that they should touch the
king first when castling). If someone did show up with a Monroi or other
electronic scorekeeper, I would require them to enter the move after playing
it on the board because of the issue of the scorekeeper detecting illegal
moves.
I believe the Monroi must be set to “chess rules off” in order to be legal. So, it would not detect an illegal move. However, the issue is that someone could be using it to see and try out various lines before they were played (almost like having a second demo board).
I have a regular-rated tournament coming up this month. I will probably just announce the rule change to let people know. I don’t think I will assess penalties.
At my chess club we’re not enforcing the new rule. We currently have a 8 player tournament running. 3 out of the 8 players are using Mon Roi. All of the Mon Roi users are following the move first, input afterwards rule.
In the CCA and Chess Center NY tournaments I have played in the stated policy has been that players may write first and move afterwards unless using an electronic scorekeeping device. Seeing the two most active organizers in the country not enforcing the new rule tells me all I need to know about what they think about the rule.
I was one of the delegates who voted against changing the rule to apply to players using a paper scoresheet. I’m still a proponent of being able to write first though I did have several incidents at the Liberty Bell Open (CCA) with two kids I played who were writing first.
In the first incident my 10 year old opponent was writing his move down first and then making it. Sometimes he’d erase the move, and write another move down instead. Personally I don’t find it particularly distracting. I try to focus on the board, not what my opponent is doing. However at some point I noticed my opponent writing 3 move pairs down before he made his move. At first I thought he had fallen behind on his notation. After he made his move I looked over at his scoresheet, and noticed that he had written in my next move (forced), his next move, my move (again forced), and his next move, and my move.
At this point I called over the floor TD who explained in no uncertain terms that what he was doing was not only against the rules, but was note taking, and was considered cheating. He made the kid cross out all the moves that he had written in ahead of time. I’m not sure if I was the TD I would have been quite as harsh, but he did get the point across.
After the game was over I spoke to the kid with his mother present. He was not aware that he could not write down forced moves ahead of time. He was also not aware of rule change. I explained the new rule to them and stated even though it was not being enforced at this tournament, that it’s possible it may be enforced at other tournaments. I also mentioned that it’s also a FIDE rule, and that it may possibly be enforced at the World Youth Championships.
In a later round I played another kid who wrote down my move before making his move. Again it was forced. Since he is one of my former students, I did not call the TD over this time. Instead I explained to him he could not do that because it’s analysis.
These two incidents concern me because it seems some kids think that it’s okay to write down more then just their own move before playing it. Even though I’m still of the opinion that writing one’s move down before playing it isn’t note taking, I do think writing anything beyond the move is note taking. If coaches are going to still encourage their students to write first they need to make it clear that nothing else can be written down.
The default on the Mon Roi is “chess rules off”. I think in the first version the default was 'chess rules on." I was playing around with the Mon Roi with “chess rules on” and came across a few interesting things. You can make illegal king moves. I castled into check and it allowed me to do so. However if I tried to move a dark squared bishop onto a light square it did not allow me to that. I also tried to capture a pawn on c5 with a knight on c3. Instead it made the capture b4xc5. (legal move.) It seems it allows one to put or leave their king in check, but does not allow pieces to move incorrectly.
With “chess rules off”, anything goes. My notation has gotten messed up on the Mon Roi because I inadvertently move a piece to the wrong sqare. It’s very sensative so it’s easy to drop pieces on the wrong square. I’ve often had pawns move from one file to another without a legal capture. I had played Na6, but because of how I touched the screen the move came out b6-a6. Having “chess rules on” would help me not make notation errors by preventing pieces ending out on wrong squares. It would assist in spotting any illegal move that did not involve kings in check, and that’s where the problem is.
Just as I thought, the new move-before-write rule is no big deal as far as 99% of the players are concerned. It’s never bothered me when an opponent does this, and probably never will.
If a player writes down several possible moves and crosses them off one by one, that MIGHT conceivably bug me, but I’m not so sure even about that.
As far as writing down future forced moves is concerned, what’s the big deal, even then? Hmm, I guess I’ll have to stop doing that, in case I run into an uptight opponent.
Bill Smythe
Are you calling me uptight? 
I don’t think I would have objected if he just written down my forced response to his first move. But I felt writing down 3 move pairs before making the first move of the combination was a bit much. Did he know it was all forced before he wrote it down, or did the act of writing it all out confirm his analysis? By not allowing future moves to be written down it eliminates the note taking argument.
Well, maybe. But come to think of it, if an opponent is in a position to force a player’s next three moves, that alone could be enough to make even the Good Humor man uptight. So maybe I’d better watch it. 
Bill Smythe
I just like to write down my move first, look once more at the board and check before commiting. Is that sandbagging? I think not. So I am in favor of doing whatever one feels they want to do regarding writing moves. Some people like to write it down afterward, others like to write it down before. Some people like descriptive notation and others perfer algebraic notation. Making silly rules like the ones ruining the game now will lower memberships and I am one who may not ever again become a member if things don’t begin to change real quick.
Origen,
You’re not going to renew anyway, since you are going to win $20,000 at the World Open, leave the country and find a nice girl, remember? 