I don’t think FIDE has enough money for that. 
I, too, am going to go back to the original subject but I am going to put a twist on it. I agree that for a substantial time period I am only going to warn about violations of the new revised 15A when it is official. But when I finally do impose penalties it will be different depending upon the scorekeeping method. If the penalty is going to be applied to a person using paper, then the penalty will be based upon 20C. The standard 2 minutes added to the opponent’s time may be appropriate after a warning.
However, and here is the rub, if they are using any chessboard graphical recording device (insert your favorite one here) then the penalty is based upon rule 20D. “Use of additional chessboard or computer prohibited. A player who analyzes a game in progress on another chessboard or consults a computer about the position is guilty of a serious violation of the rules. Though the director still has discretion, the usual penalty is loss of the game.”
So, how do other TD’s read this? This may see heavy-handed, but I don’t see a way out of it.
It will be interesting to see if this, (forfeiting a player who violates 15A and keeps score with an electronic device) survives the inevitable appeal.
I’m out of the loop on this. Is electronic scorekeeping a “thing” among young players—and their parents—these days? Offhand, I don’t recall seeing an electronic scorekeeping device in action at any tournament I’ve played in or watched. Or directed, for that matter, but since I almost never TD anymore due to my work schedule that’s not a surprise.
Where did this MonRoi come from and how is it marketed? Is it one of those things that’s a big deal at scholastic events and a handful of big Swisses, but unknown to the rest of the chess world?
Maybe this is a byproduct of internet chess. Sigh. My tournament chess sensibilities will always be rooted in the way things were done in 1980…with the one major exception that I strongly support time-delay digital clocks for any game that ends in Sudden Death, which these days pretty much means “any game,” period.
[quote=“ericmark”]
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I’m out of the loop on this. Is electronic scorekeeping a “thing” among young players—and their parents—these days?..quote]
I think a certain company hopes that it will be. 
Certainly, younger scholastic players have the most to gain from its use. (Until a critical mass of all players use it.)
My concerns are not necessarily about their implementation as to how I, as a TD, will have to deal with them. Explaining to parents and others that they are legit, etc. should be an ongoing problem for potentially years. This penalty discussion for the device has yet to be discussed at length and I hope this thread is revisited if rule 15A revision is passed at the Delegate’s meeting.
BTW, if it does pass, I am buying one for my 9 year old.
Cheers,
Terry
I suppose it’s a matter of how much one considers a single move “analysis.” Clearly if a player starts entering a variation into the electronic display, that falls under 20D, and loss of game should be the penalty. However, IMHO if it’s just entering a single move before it’s played, then 15A applies. Maybe the penalty should be warning, then 2 minutes on a repeat, then loss of game on a third violation.
-Matt
Being able to look at the actual position after your leading candidate, even once or twice per game, is a huge advantage. Entering even one unplayed move on the device should be an immediate loss.
-ed g.
But what about those of us who actually want others to write down their move only after they have made it?
Actually, I would like the MonRoi because it would save me a lot of trouble deciphering my writing later on, and prevent inaccurate scoresheets. But the fact is, ever since I started playing tournament chess back in the late sixties, I would feel it was at least bad form, if not cheating, to write the move down before making it.
I have never understood why, if you’re going to the trouble of writing down the move, you wouldn’t make it. As I see it, the idea of writing the move down first is so you don’t forget your first thought. Is this how we are supposed to learn to think ahead? By writing a move down that we MIGHT make? This is taking notes, pure and simple.
I would like to hear from the GMs about this. Do they write it first, or move first? And why would anyone use their own time to write down their own move when they could make the move, hit the clock, and write it down on their opponent’s time?
No, I think there are many others, not a minority, who would prefer or have already been writing the move after pressing the clock. This has been a debate for a long time.
Radishes
And why shouldn’t it continue to be a debate? I prefer to write, move, clock, but then again, I just play for fun.
I think the players don’t write the move down as a note, but as their intended move, but use the ability to erase it to their advantage, by doing one last cross check of the position. In some sense this is more a violation of the “spirit” of touch move. And currently it is legal and fair because both players can do it.
It took me about 4 to 5 rated games to train myself to move first before writing the move down.
So now I can go either way with this rule.
I don’t quite see the force of that argument. I want all the players to wear suits and ties during tournaments, but my wish does not create an obligation.
A perfectly reasonable argument, as long as you do not incovenience anyone else in the process.
Apparently you have never studied Kotov. “When you have finished analyzing all the variations and gone along all the branches of the tree of analyis you must first of all write the move down on your scoresheet before you play it. I have observed the practice of many of my fellow grandmasters and I have noticed that the great majority of them write the move down first before playing, though a minority do it the other way round.” With the disappearance of the “Soviet School” this may be less true, but it is by no means the settled issue you seem to think.
If you ever ERASE a written move before you commit to that move on the board, then you have cheated and broken the rules by taking notes.
In theory, nobody cares whether you WRITE your move in advance, we only care if you ever erase it.
In fact, I prefer that my opponent write his move in advance of making his move on the board. It wastes some of his clock time, and if I can see his writing then I get a head start on my thinking time.
It takes a surprisingly long time to write a neat copy of the gamescore (the moves), so the amount of time wasted by writing in advance is not always negligible.
[size=150]*** MONROI COMPLICATIONS[/size]
Same goes for MonRoi: enter your move in advance if you want, but no changing of your move should be even possible on the device (when in tournament mode). The degree of illegality is even worse if the device shows a little picture of the current board position.
“But what if my hand slipped and I entered the wrong move?” Tough, too bad, it is your move now.
“But what if I accidently enter an illegal move, I have to take that back!” No, the device should refuse entry of any illegal move, or neither FIDE nor the USCF should approve of the device.
Some on these forums have said “Do not worry, MonRoi forcibly marks every ply that was changed after being entered, so you can see if your opponent has broken the rule against ERASING an input move”.
But as a practical matter this is untrue. I cannot see his little screen, I do not know how to work the device, I cannot tell even when he is entering a move versus just maybe scrolling to see the moves from earlier in the game.
Marking changes is not good enough. Instead MonRoi must forbid (AA) changing your own moves and (BB) entering illegal moves.
The only moves MonRoi should allow be changed are those of the opponent.
The TD does not have discretion to allow a player to take notes during the game.
Use CRAN notation, and never have another indecipherable gamescore sheet again.
CRAN stands for Concise Reversible Algebraic Notation. The basic idea of CRAN is to eliminate the dependence each notated ply has on context (information about other plies, or on a diagram). Each ply is notated in a maximally informative way, but as “concisely” as possible. CRAN always always gives both origin square coordinates first (letter then digit); then it gives only the non-redundant coordinates of the destination square.
When CRAN is used, one badly scribbled unreadable move can be overcome by the rich information given in other plies. In fact, an entire pair of plies (or ‘plair’) can be omitted, and still we can almost always reconstruct the game.
CRAN also eliminates those occasional replay errors when following a game from a magazine or book.
CRAN says 1. e24, not 1. e4 nor 1. e2-e4.
Here is a comparison between plain SAN and CRAN:
** SAN: 12. Bg4 Qf6 13. Rxc3
** CRAN: 12. Bf3g4 Qf56 13. Rg3:Nc
Notice that even without the board, just by reading the CRAN above, you can see the gist of the tactical combination that just won a knight for White. That is impossible with mere SAN.
Algebraic notation is already bursting full of letters. So it seems dumb to me that yet another letter, ‘x’, is usually used for the “takes” symbol. CRAN uses the ‘:’ colon character for “takes”. Further, I believe the ‘:’ character should be used for “takes” only when the type of piece taken is guaranteed to be given also (null for pawn being taken is fine).
CRAN not only eliminates indecipherable gamescores, it enables better resetting of pieces after following a side variation.
[size=150]COLOR INFO TOO?![/size]
The only bit of info that the CRAN above lacks is the color of the pieces. For that, uppercase v. lowercase letters can be used for the White v. Black pieces respectively. I usually do this when I make notes in the margins of books, as it eliminates the need to squeeze in move-pair numbers (no longer needed to tell White moves apart from Black moves).
I sometimes use lowercase letters for Black pieces during my live tournament games too (very easy to get used to).
To avoid overload confusion with the letter ‘b’, I use ‘T’ and ‘t’ for the bishop (which I think of as “tangle”, derived from the triangular shape of its head). If there was any confusion about the ‘T’, the presence of the origin square info elimates it.
** CRAN: 12. Tf3g4 qf56 13. Rg3:nc
About a year ago, Chess Life ran an article encouraging students to occasionally play some games in reverse, to gain a novel perspective on how a game’s phases and attacks evolve. CRAN supports that, but Long Algebraic Notation does not because it lacks info about the type of piece taken.
If I’m not mistaken, the USCF especially prohibited the function of the Monroi which prevents illegal moves as it is too great an advantage for the player using one to know when an illegal move has been committed. Besides, how does this solve the problem if the opponent’s move is entered incorrectly?
Alex Relyea
I agree that if a device will alert the player to an illegal move, then it should not be allowed. By having a function that prevents an illegal move being entered, you give the player an advantage.
Here is a question for people who think that it is acceptable to have it prevent an illegal move. You make an illegal move that your opponent does not notice. You enter it in the PDA and it refuses to accept it, and now you realize that you made an illegal move. You don’t want to point out the illegal move since you both have around 8 minutes left and you don’t want a 2 minute penalty. How do you keep score now?
You guys are right, I was wrong to say MonRoi should block entry of illegal moves.
But it now seems the inherent nature of MonRoi makes it implausible to prevent note taking!
When my opponent enters something into his MonRoi, I cannot see any detail the way I can when he instead writes on his scoresheet. He could be entering a move to remember to consider on his next turn, or he could be getting caught up in ply notation after falling behind, or he could be fixing entries he now sees were inaccurate, or…?
Enforcement against note taking is not literally impossible. I could always ask the TD to examine my opponent’s MonRoi during the game, but that is largely unrealistic at the club level.
Gene,
I’ll concede the point that most people would not be verifying after the game that their opponent never took a move back on the display. (And what would you do if they had? Checkmate ends the game!)
Rob
In practice, I doubt you’d actually have a problem. I’ve seen a tournament with the MonRoi device in use. I believe I could see the display adequately from across the table to tell what my opponent was entering. Spectators walking by can certainly see (from behind the player) what’s being entered. I think the odds are pretty good that any player using the MonRoi to cheat this way would be discovered. I feel pretty confident that I’d notice it if my opponent were doing something like this, but YMMV.
BTW The normal practice seemed to be leaving the MonRoi laying flat on the table, just like a scoresheet. If the player actually picked it up and held it in his hand, it would be much more difficult. If my opponent started using the MonRoi like this I’d probably ask to see what he was doing. If it was suspicious enough, I’d ask a TD to check it out.
But then I guess the people at FIDE cared enough to make it a rule to write the move first.
I don’t want to have to watch my opponent to see if he writes down the move first and then erases it. I’d rather spend my time concentrating on my moves. That’s why I care about him writing his move down first. That’s why I think the new rule change is good and makes no difference whether he is using the MonRoi or not.
By the way, let’s not hijack this thread with talk about it and alternative notation. Let’s stay on topic, please.
Radishes