I think my kid got mind tricked by another kid who claimed that my kid had made a touch move. My kid doesn’t think he touched it and if he did it was accidental. During the game, my kid complied and felt forced to move a piece he had no intention of moving. My kid didn’t request a TD ruling.
Are there any penalties for requesting a TD ruling? Or is the worst case getting ruled against?
The short answer is that there are no explicit penalties for requesting a ruling, although if a claim is egregiously inaccurate, it might be appropriate to award the opponent extra time.
More generally, such activity, especially if there’s a pattern of it, could be considered a form of bullying and subject to a variety of sanctions under the Code of Ethics and the SafePlay guidelines.
A somewhat related issue is that outsiders are not allowed to interfere with a game, so you cannot request a ruling on behalf of your child.
Thanks. A similar situation happened before when he was a total beginner and we chalked it up to kids learning the rules. (He also lost that game.) This time both kids were 1500+ USCF.
Yeah, I know only the player can request a ruling. I wish he had at the time. Oh well, it’s a learning experience I guess. Now he needs to remember not to let someone walk all over him with a false interpretation of the rules. If in doubt, ask for a TD ruling.
If a player has any questions or problems they should ALWAYS stop and raise their hands or get the Tournament Director.
With young players a general rule of thumb is that about 85% of such cases with a TD not being called over are due to the kid being too shy or intimidated to call one. The remaining 15% are cases where what the kid told the parent did not actually happen and was just an excuse to the parent for why the kid lost.
In one well known case at a National Scholastic the kid recorded an entire game with the opponent using moves different from what was played and the game was brought to the chief TD as proof that the result had been recorded incorrectly. The (personal) scorebook used had the actual game two pages earlier and the upshot was that the kid was ejected and scoresheets from only one player were no longer considered to be proof of anything at scholastic nationals (most cases where the players record the result incorrectly and verify that incorrect result to the TD collecting it are easy to resolve because both players agree to the actual result when the initial error gets noticed)..
Given how common cheating on school tests is, I’m not surprised kids might sometimes try to cheat in chess too.
In the case of the touch rule, since this is the second time that the exact same version of the touch rule has been used against my kid (“an accidental brush against a piece is a touch and you must move the piece”), I suspect when kids are being taught the rule, there is no clarification on what to do with accidental touches. So kids think any touch counts and then some aggressively try to enforce it. The first time this happened to my kid was a couple years ago when he was a total beginner and apparently both he and I had completely forgotten the actual touch rule that we learned that time (it must be an intentional touch). This time around, whether the other kid was unsportsmanlike or just aggressively trying to enforce a mistaken understanding of the touch rule, we’ll never know. I’m a bit surprised a kid in the 1700-1800 range would do this though.
This time around, my kid also felt uncomfortable with accepting the other kid’s demand but at the same time didn’t call for the TD. He wasn’t necessarily too intimidated to call the TD. But he’s definitely not in the habit of calling the TD to resolve an issue. So after this happened I had to emphasize to him that you have to call the TD if there’s anything you feel uncomfortable about rule-wise and that it’s ok to let the TD sort it out.
Research has shown that many kids using ChatGPT don’t think it’s cheating. I could see the same logic applying to chess.
But bullying, usually by older or higher rated players, is something we as an organization need to deal with.
On several occasions I witnessed a touch move dispute between scholastic players where it was pretty clear what did/did not occur with one player pretty much not telling the truth. One time they were both untruthful – the player did just barely touched the piece with intent, but his opponent told the TD that he picked up the piece, started to move it, and placed it back on the original square.
Accidental needs to be explained well, too. I once had bishops on d2 and e2 and in time trouble quickly started to play Bg5 with the bishop from e2 – Surely, it was an accident that I picked up the wrong bishop and surely I had to move the e2 bishop somewhere to where it was allowed to move and not the d2 bishop to g5. 
To avoid the intent issue I announce grasping a piece of yours or your opponent’s. You may intend to move the a2 bishop but if you grasp the b2 bishop then that triggered touch move (assuming, of course, that the b2 bishop has a legal move available).
That also avoids intending to move a rook from b4 to d4 to give check without noticing that the player’s king on h1 is in check from a bishop on c6. Touch move was triggered and the rook needs to move to e4.
One player tried to say that if you end up making an illegal move because you didn’t see something (usually missing you are in check) then you should be allowed to move any piece. I responded by saying that would allow anybody to negate every touch move call by moving their piece illegally (i.e. Nc3-e5, Bb2-f4, Rc1-d6, etc.). Since touch move should not be negated they have to live with the current rule.
As far as bullying goes, I have an unusual way to treat a player’s willingness to waive a penalty against the opponent. I still impose the penalty even if the player is willing to let it go. Otherwise we open the door to peer pressure bullying to force the player to “be nice” by waiving it, or even inviting stronger intimidation tactics. I refuse to acquiesce to that type of pressure.