The August Chess Life arrived in my mailbox today. It included a letter to the editor containing a rules story that surprised me:
Really?? I don’t read rule 10B that way at all. In fact, the TD Tip for 10B seems to indicate clearly that the “I really intended to move another piece, so my touch wasn’t deliberate” defense is invalid.
The scoresheet issue seems irrelevant to me, and I would have ruled that Black must move the bishop.
The TD was wrong. The standard is “touched the piece with the evident intention of moving it,” not “intended to move the piece touched.” I might be able to come up with a hypothetical in which the scoresheet was relevant, but this isn’t it.
The actual wording is “… a player on move who deliberately touches one or more pieces, in a manner that may reasonably be interpreted as the beginning of a move, must move or capture the first piece touched that can be moved or captured …” (10B, emphasis mine) and “… A director who believes a player touched a piece by accident should not require the player to move that piece. …” (10E).
So this might give a TD just enough wiggle room to rule the way the TD in your example did, if he is so inclined. The question could be, whether white’s picking up of the bishop was deliberate or not, i.e. what is the difference between a brain fart and a finger fehler?
Still, I probably would have ruled the same way Steve Eddins and John Hillery would have.
If, however, I were playing the black pieces, I might well let white get away with it, at least if I were really convinced white intended to move the queen.
I think that reading is a pretty big stretch. If you pull out a gun and shoot someone, the act is “deliberate,” even if it isn’t “intentional” (you meant to miss him, or maybe wanted to shoot somebody else). This is not the same as “accidental” (you drop the gun and it goes off and hits somebody). The rule was written that way to eliminate frivolous claims of a player moving a piece with his elbow.
I’ve always ruled that touching a piece by accident is limited to just occasions where the piece is not picked up (and not even all of those). A partial list of circumstances would include:
brushing it with your elbow;
brushing it with the back of your fingers while reaching for another piece (could include brushing the h-pawn while reaching for your pencil to write down your opponent’s move);
brushing it with your palm while reaching for another piece (such as brushing the cross on the king while reaching to play d4 on the second move of the French);
being physically bumped while reaching to make your move.
As far as having written a move down goes, the move isn’t truly recordable until it is played. The current (depending on the delegates meeting) 15A rule is that you cannot write the move before making it. The proposed changes are that you can, but you are not bound to actually play it. Since this tournament was under the current 15A rule I would give a 15A warning in addition to otherwise ignoring that the move had been written. I wouldn’t be surprised if some TDs would actually give a 15A penalty on top of enforcing touch move.
About the only time I might not enforce touch move when a piece is picked up is when it is for something like an obvious adjustment (the table got bumped and a piece fell over), in which case a warning about always first announcing an adjustment can still be given.
I thought that was wrong as well. I ahd this very case in a scholastic event last year. I ruled the player had to move the piece he actually picked up - didn’t care what he wrote down. The mother was very upset adn told me she was goign to ask all fo the NTD’s she saw at the National Youth Action a few weeks later. She later apologized after everyone she talked to said they would have ruled the same way I did.
Here is the other problem. What if I write down a blunder and then pick up and move a different piece? at what point am I not intentional in what I am doing?
This rule is designed to deal with reaching for one piece and knocking over another - the back of the elbow thing Jeff mentioned above - not “oops I grabbed the wrong piece”. TD blew it big time.
The rule book does not say that picking up a piece is necessarily ‘deliberate’. It should, but it does not.
Instead 10B and 10E are among several magic mind-reading rules that should be modified. TD lattitude is one thing, mind-reading is another.
In my view for the touch move rule, the wording should be re-phrased to narrow on two types of valid exceptions:
(A) the accidental elbow type of forgivable touch, and
(B) the I Adjust announced or one finger touch.
All other touches should be final, whether “deliberate” or not.
As for 15A, the old rule needed tightening.
(1) It needed to prevent what many consider to be note taking by erasing-rewriting.
(2) It needed to prevent an obvious way for cheating to leak in (erasing allows an easy way to communicate to spectators the move you are considering).
(3) The USCF was out of step with FIDE and other chess organizations.
(4) Something needed to be added for the narrow case of the non-paper MonRoi.
One can argue that players could be allowed write their move first, as long as they cannot erase the move.
But TD Lerman went further and rewarded a player for violating the current 15A.
If we pretend that prematurely writing the move is currently legal (tho erasing is still illegal), then TD Lerman acted correctly. In fact had the TD done otherwise and required the him to play a move different from the one he prematurely wrote, then the TD in effect would have allowed the equivalent of erasing! Yes, think about it.
Thus if 15A is amended to allow premature writing (without allowing erasing), then that amendment should also clarify that the touch move rule no longer applies after a move is written prematurely.
We see again that it is so much cleaner to reserve the scoresheet for only things that have already happened.
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It is extremely difficult to swallow your reading of 10A-G. In particular, 10B disposes of the case in question completely: “Except for 10A, a player who moves or touches one or more pieces, in a manner that may reasonably be interpreted as the beginning of a move, (emphasis mine) must move or capture the first piece touched that can be moved or captured.” I agree that you could, with some ingenuity, construct a borderline case in which the TD would have to make a judgment call, but picking up the piece, holding it over the board, and then putting it back does not qualify. The scoresheet is completely irrelevant here, and the TD was simply wrong to consider it. (Assuming he did. Note that what Lerman actually wrote was that anotherTD had ruled this way, and that this other TD might have ruled otherwise had the player moved before writing.)
I am reminded of something that happened to me decades ago: I thought
I had an opportunity to move my queen from d1 to h5 with threats that
would easily decide the game. With great excitement, I set out to make
the move. After I pushed the clock button, my opponent looked at me
like I was crazy and asked, “What are you doing?” I looked down, and, to
my horror, I saw that I had accidently grabbed my king (on e1) and
moved it out to h5. I just assumed that I was then obliged to take back
my non-standard king move and make some legal move with my king.
Since then, I have sometimes wondered if I could have successfully
argued that it was obvious that I had not deliberately intended to touch my
king and that I should have been allowed to make the queen move. Would
it have made a difference if I had written Qh5 before putting my king out
on h5?
You can argue anything you want. A competent TD would rule against that argument.
If you pick up a piece, and that piece has a legal move, you must move that piece. Full stop.
The scoresheet is irrelevant. If the scoresheet records a move with another piece, then the scoresheet is simply incorrect, and the player must fix it.
The scoresheet records the moves of the game. The game is not required to follow what is written on the scoresheet (with the exceptions that should be obvious to anyone who has read the rulebook).
I agree with that ruling. In effect, you are accepting the scoresheet as a “witness” to what has already actually happened on the board. That’s very different from using the scoresheet as a mind-reader, in a situation where most TDs agree that the player’s INTENTION (as to what piece to move) is completely irrelevant. What matters in that case is that the player picked up a piece, as opposed to accidentally brushing against the piece.
We’ve been over that ground many, many times.
One guideline that I try to use (it’s not perfect - but it usually points in the right direction) is to assume that the purpose of the touch-move rule is to disallow making mis-leading “feints” on the board with the intention of getting a reaction from the other player. Here - that means that if it looks like you intentionally picked up a piece, it doesn’t matter one bit if you actually intended to move some other piece. What matters is what the outside observer sees - not what was in your mind.
In Grant’s case, it’s not about resolving a question of INTENT, but rather tring to make a decision on the FACTS. Could he have been wrong? Sure - but when you are faced with a 50-50 call, anything that makes it 51-49 is welcome!
Yes, think about it.