During the 4th round of a tournament I was directing last weekend, my computer operator remarked that on one of the boards, the Black rooks were mismatched. I checked, and sure enough, one of the Black rooks was huge – almost the size of a Queen – and the other one was smaller than normal. Since they were on adjacent squares (c8 and d8, I think), the contrast was very obvious. Black was one of our regulars; White was a Hungarian player with a high expert FIDE rating, playing in his first US tournament. I thought it must be leaving a pretty tacky impression on him that we couldn’t even use matched pieces.
So I extracted two normal Rooks from one of our spare sets, and as unobtrusively as possible, removed the mismatched pair, replaced them with the normal ones, and said “That should be better.” Both players smiled at me. I didn’t notice who was on move. A while later, the Black player came out of the room, came up to my TD table, and said, in a solemn deadpan voice: “I was doing OK until you took my big Rook.” I know this player well, and I’m sure that he was just being funny – he was not really upset that I took the Rook.
Later, I mentioned this incident to one of my friends, and he thought that I had overstepped my bounds by substituting the Rooks while play was in progress. That thought had occurred to me before I did it, but I decided to do it anyway, and neither player seemed to mind. Was my action OK, or should I have let them play on with the mismatched Rooks?
I think I know where Mr. Relyea is heading with this question, but whether the event was run under US Chess or FIDE rules, I would urge Mr. Kosterman to reconsider his course of action for future reference.
I am fond of quoting NTD Ernest Schlich: “The TD’s role is to restore equity.” (Regrettably, I often fall short of this goal myself, but I do try to remember it is my goal.) In this case, the two players were playing their game with no complaint about the equipment in use. My personal opinion is that, no matter how carefully undertaken, replacing pieces while the game is in progress is disruptive to the players. With no complaint or other indication of distress, I would be reluctant to intervene in this manner even if the game were governed by the FIDE Laws of Chess (in which the arbiter has a far more active role).
If the game were governed by US Chess rules, I would be sterner in my admonition. I would refer to rule 21D (intervention in games) and note that the situation described in Mr. Kosterman’s post does not appear to fall under any of the situations in which rule 21D permits the director to intervene in the game.
Chess is a game between two players. What bothers a TD does not necessarily both the two players in the game. The fact that the players did not express objection to replacement of the piece in question does not necessarily mean that the players were not disturbed by the action.
The FLC does not address this issue. I would find the standardization of the pieces during the game to be well within the discretion permitted to an arbiter under the preface to the Laws of Chess.
The strict non-interventionists within USCF will claim that the intervention was unwarranted. Balderdash. Nonstandard pieces invite confusion and are malum per se. I make the same replacement, and I vigorously defend any appeal.
EDIT: I respect Ken Ballou greatly, but I have to disagree with him here.
It was a regular tournament, USCF-rated but not FIDE-rated. I did wonder whether or not I should intervene. In the future, I will probably (a) check all boards for standard equipment before the round starts, and (b) refrain from interfering during a game unless one of the players complains.
In a situation where a player is using a tipped over pawn in lieu of a promoted Queen in a regular chess game (i.e. not bug), I will find a Queen and tell the player to replace it—whether the players are (at least for the moment) OK with the tipped pawn, it just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. I hate Kings with busted off crosses (which can look a lot like a Queen) but that I’ll let that go unless one of the players complains.
I’m not sure I’ve run into that scenario, since a player who doesn’t know enough to flip a Rook or ask for a second Queen isn’t generally the type of player who will get into time trouble. But probably yes unless the faux-Queen is getting captured right off.
Particularly in scholastics I’ve seen flipped rooks accidentally knocked over and replaced base down (now only rooks), so if there are queens available I’ll even exchange out a flipped rook (with the exchange timed for minimal invasiveness).
I would allow the big Acerook to be on the board… but I’m slightly biased.
At this year’s K-12 Grade Championships, a kid had promoted to a rook (upright). Couple moves later when he noticed it was mate in 1, he moved the rook diagonally like if it was a queen. His opponent questioned the legality of the move and I ruled the game was a draw (KQR vs K).
In the situation laid out by the OP, I think I would intervene, but I’d be a little more circumspect about it.
First I’d watch the game for a minute or so, just to be sure there wasn’t time trouble or any other potentially explosive problem looming. Then, immediately after one of the players made a move, I would stop both clocks and ask “Gentlemen, would it be OK if I furnished a couple of standard-size rooks for you?”. After both players gave me their puzzled acquiescence (as though they were saying “well, sure, why not?”), I would then make the rook substitutions and restart the clocks.
Normally, I would not make a change of the pieces unless the distortion in size was large enough to question what that piece is. I would also not do anything if the players were in or nearing time pressure. If it was earlier in the game, I would ask the players to pause the clock, and ask if they would not mind substituting in a piece that is more proportional. It is up to the TD on a case by case basis. I certainly would step in to make a change if one of the pieces was a quarter or a Civil War soldier.
In many tournaments I see sets with mismatched bishops, broken turrets on the rooks, missing crosses on the kings, and pawns of many sizes. Some sets have pieces that are many shades of white and black. Players have mixed sets because they lose or break pieces all of the time. In one of my own tournament sets I have three extra White queens, an extra black pawn, and a triple weighted Black bishop. They are in the set because of extra pieces left over by players at the end of a tournament.
Since our club provides sets and boards, we have less of a problem with mismatched sets. However, at one time one of the tournament assistant TDs, a mother with a penchant for perfection, spent a whole afternoon matching up the pieces on our sets so that all of the sets had the same shade of White pieces. She pointed out that men have no sense of contrast, color, style, etc. We decided not to poke the bear and let her match the pieces to her heart’s content.
Sorry Brennan, but I think you are wrong here. It is my philosophy, and I think it should be that of every TD, to intervene in a game of chess as a TD only to the extent necessary. Whether or not a TD finds a particular situation or action annoying is irrelevant. The game of chess is between the two players involved, and unless one of them complains I have to assume that neither of them is disturbed by whatever it is that disturbs me, and I let it go. The situation described by the OP does not fall under any of the possibilities mentioned in Rule 21D, and the TD should not have intervened.
Unfortunately, many players do not know to ask when there is a problem at their board. They are not as familiar with the rules and minutiae as a TD is supposed to be. Players put up with things when they do not have to. Some might say, “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” but in chess tournaments we try to have equal conditions for all of the players. It is under the TD’s discretion to decide whether to intervene. He should use that discretion carefully. I can think of a number of scenarios where I would remove the big rook and replace it. I can also envision situations where I would let it go.
For the record, this was fairly early in the game, with a generous time control (40/2, SD/1, d5), so there was no question of any time trouble. Also, I was not particularly bothered by the mismatched Rooks, but I thought that our Hungarian guest might be. If it had been any other board, I might not have done anything.
The reason why the mismatch was not noticed until the 4th round was that we were moved to a different room for the second day of play, so everything had to be packed up Saturday night and set up again Sunday morning. We were a bit rushed, so I had some of the players doing the setup for me. Everything was set up correctly, but they either didn’t notice the mismatched Rooks, or didn’t think it mattered. These were our own sets, by the way (not provided by the players).
It’s interesting that the opponent was a foreign player. I don’t think I’m changing my recommendation of what should have been done, but I do wonder in the back of my mind whether the visitor knew that under US Chess rules, a player must in most cases make a claim before a TD intervenes in the game. It could have been problematic if, for instance, there had been a “touch move” violation you witnessed but did not correct because the opponent did not make a claim. The opponent, likely accustomed to the FIDE Laws of Chess, would have expected the arbiter to enforce the rule as soon as he witnessed the violation.
But there is at some point a problem with this logic, and we know what that problem is: Generally, TDs, with their additional experience, exhibit greater foresight with respect to a ‘questionable’ situation than non-TDs. What a player agrees to at the beginning of a game, because it seems like no big deal, may very well be a big deal later, because they didn’t reasonably think it through. TDs know better, and that’s already been exhibited by some of the answers in this thread.
If, for example, two players were short of a full set, so they tore off little sheets of paper and wrote piece letters on those papers in red ink and black ink for White and Black, and their board was located below a heating/cooling vent (that was currently off) - would you not offer a “real” set when one became available?
I think there is clearly room for judgment in these situations, and that any judgment should be exercised as unobtrusively as possible (for example, immediately after one player moves.)
Going back to Ken’s comment about Schlich’s quote “The TD’s role is to restore equity.” I think this quote falls short, and would replace it with: “The TD’s role is to restore and maintain equity throughout the game with minimal intrusion.” A TD should not interrupt a game several times with decisions that restore equity throughout a game, but rather should make one good decision that leads to consistent equity for the entire (remaining) game.
Which could be accomplished by FIDE adopting USCF rules - and in some cases of rule differences we have a significant group that thinks that would be preferable.
but I’m slightly biased.