In his column http://www.chesscafe.com/heisman/heisman.htm today at Chess Cafe, Dan Heisman says that it is illegal to use unreasonable amounts of time in a hopeless position “to annoy the opponent”. He goes on to suggest that there is a limit to what is a legal amount of time to use in trying to find a move in a tough position. Is there something in the rulebook that supports Heisman’s position?
Alex Relyea
Although it isn’t stated, the examples in Heisman’s column appear to pertain to internet games and not over-the-board. The 45 second increment is common online but is never used in USCF play.
A blanket statement that it is illegal to use your time in a hopeless position is false. USCF Rule 18G1 applies to adjudicating the result of a game in progress. The TD is encouraged to adjudicate a game where a player in a hopeless position disappears for more than 15 minutes or “shows little interest in considering the position.” That means a player who sits at the board thinking hard, even when hopelessly lost, may do so until his or her flag falls.
The situation online is more difficult because there is no way to know that an opponent is seriously thinking about the position or just wasting your time while doing something else. ICC help files say that “when you are lost, letting your time run out instead of resigning” is an example of “behavior that many people consider to be unsporting or rude.” However, this is merely a guideline (see “help guidelines”) and not a specific ICC rule (see “help abuse”).
Michael Aigner
Hmm I wouldn’t deal with the hassle of adjorning the game. I’d forfeit the individual for unsportsmanlike conduct. I believe we have TD discretion. Let them go file a complaint with the Ethics Committee or the TDCC.
USCF should start moving to increment based time controls as well in my opinion.
Michael didn’t say adjourn, he said adjudicate (giving the stalling player a loss). So far I’ve found that merely citing this rule is enough to convince a blatantly stalling player to resign.
Increment and delay have almost nothing to do with the rule (only modifying the amount of time remaining for a stall to happen). A blatant stall in a Game/120 tournament could happen as soon as move 4 (after 1. e4 d5, 2. ed Qxd5, 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. 0-0). Oops, castling is illegal and now white’s only move with the touched king allows mate in one, so white proceeds to spend the remainder of the two hours just sitting there and letting his opponent get annoyed).
What rule?
Alex Relyea
Ah I misread. Thanks for the catch Jeff.
18G1 as Michael mentioned above.
18G. Adjudications. Only under emergency circumstances may a director permanently adjudicate a game; that is, declare a result based upon best play by both sides.
…
18G1. Example of emergency. An emergency situation could arise, for example, if a player with substantial time remaining and a poor position disappears for more than 15 minutes or is present but shows little interest in considering the position. Such behavior is unsportsmanlike and the director is encouraged to adjudicate, possibly after a warning.
…
After seeing how Tim dealt with situations like this prior to the new rulebook, I was not at all surprised when I saw this rule in the current edition.
Right, and I’m in favor of this rule, as is anyone who has had an opponent simply disappear in a lost position, but I fail to see how it applies to an opponent who is studying the position, whether they have more than one legal move or not.
Full disclosure: several years ago I had an opponent who wandered into a position where he had one legal move and that would lead to mate on my next move. He was in a bad position anyway, but he refused to move for the fifteen or twenty minutes it took his clock to run out, after which he claimed that I didn’t beat him, but that he lost on time. I was sufficiently upset that I refused to shake his hand after the game, but I never thought that he had done anything illegal. He was at the board, studying the position the whole time, FWIW.
Alex Relyea
At the 1984 U.S. Open, I had an opponent who kept leaving the board (and the tournament hall) for extended periods of time, returning occasionally to make a few quick moves. Finally, when he had been gone for over 20 minutes, I complained to the TDs. They searched - and found him in the parking lot watching a Dallas Cowboys exhibition game on a portable TV in the back of a van. He was furious with the TDs for ordering him back to the board.
– Hal Terrie
Michael already said that there was nothing against using your time if you really are studying the position. He went on to bring up this rule if you are NOT studying the position, as that is the only time you can rule against a person for the way the time is being used.
Many years ago I had a game in the US Amateur where I had a forced mate in one move. I had checked the opponent’s king, and there was only one square for the king to go to. The next move was mate. It was late, and my opponent would not resign or make a move. I complained to the TD, he forfeited the player on the spot, and reamed him for poor sportsmanship. The next day the player came up to me and apologized for being a jerk.
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It was late in the game and I had an easily winning position. The game had gone relatively fast, and I was in no hurry to get home. So when I promoted my pawn I replaced it with a rook instead of a queen.
This required several more moves to mate than the queen would have.
I suppose this was questionable sportsmanship by me 
on a minor scale, since I was toying with my lost opponent. But since he can resign any time he wants…
Amateur!
Playing online, I often promote to bishops and mate using KBB.
In extreme cases, I have occasionally promoted to KBN - just for the practice. But, I usually leave myself an escape hatch (another P to move if I need an extra 50 moves, for example).
In EXTREMELY extreme cases the preferred method is to promote your pawns so that you have a full complement of back-rank pieces…and then move the pieces back to their original squares before advancing on the opponent’s K.
How do you do this if your two promoted bishops are on the same color square? 
Bill Smythe
It’s called “planning ahead”. Try it some time.
One scholastic tournament I was directing I saw a kid promote 4 times. He kept borrowing queens from other boards where no games were being played. He was getting ready to promote a 5th pawn. He knew how to mate with only two queens. He was doing it more to be obnoxious then anything else. I told him to cut the nonsense and stop showing up his opponent like that. The opponent had a minor piece or two, so there was not a stalemate possibility.
I think that’s a serious problem. If someone is still playing and doesn’t resign when his opponent has four queens, then either he thinks he has stalemate possibilities (I’d sac all my minor pieces) or is a jerk who should resign. I see no reason not to drag things out if the opponent refuses to resign in a hopeless position. I think that’s at least as rude.
It’s also sad to think that a player in a tournament “knew how to mate with only two queens”. Sigh.
Alex Relyea
When it comes to the lower boards of a scholastic tournament, I’ve posted before that my rule of thumb is that K+Q vs K is a stalemate about 50% of the time and K+2Q vs K is a stalemate about 90% of the time while adding even more queens makes a stalemate more probable. I don’t bother saying anything to the promoting player until after the stalemate has occurred as then they are more likely to remember that being a bit obnoxious can be detrimental to their result.
In this particular case it was in a Primary section where the kids are experienced players. Since we have an unrated novice section for same age kids who are under 600 or unrated a little more is expected in the Primary section. Also the kid in question had a 900 rating, was not going a to allow a stalemate, but just liked the idea of seeing how many queens he could put on the board. I think he’s in high school now and is higher arted then me. 
Even Garry Kasparov has given an inadvertent stalemate, although in a blitz game: chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1258478