The Official Blue Book and Encyclopedia of Chess (1956)

Running Chess Tournaments
1

I’ve been interested in reading Kenneth Harkness’s book “The Official Blue Book and Encyclopedia of Chess”. Some of the rules which were in effect in 1956 seem unfair, unworkable and unduly harsh by today’s standards. For example:

If both players stopped recording their moves, and had failed to record ten moves for each side, the director could declare the game lost for both players. According to Harkness, a player who was very short of time might be excused from recording his moves as an act of leniency by the director, but would still be subject to the double forfeit if his opponent also stopped recording his moves. There was no rule about a player with less than five minutes left on the clock not having to record his moves.

A player with a handicap or religious conviction which prevented him from recording his moves, moving the men on the chessboard or stopping the clock could ask the director to allow a deputy to perform those functions for him. The opponent could object to the choice of deputy, e.g. on the grounds that the deputy was a stronger player than the player with the handicap, and could also insist on having a deputy of his own, in which case it would be the responsibility of the player with the handicap to find a deputy for the opponent as well as himself. Nothing is said about what would happen if this second deputy couldn’t be found, except that neither the Director nor the Local Tournament Committee could be held responsible for the consequences.

No game played at a time limit of faster than 30 moves in an hour could be rated. Games which went too long could be adjudicated rather than adjourned if allowed by the tournament rules, but it was recommended that adjudications be judged by a master-strength player who was not playing in the tournament. Harkness mentions that games at some tournaments were played using what we would call a sudden death time control, but he strongly discourages this:

From a 2015 point of view it seems strange that Harkness considered adjudication to be a lesser evil than sudden death time controls. Of course there were no delay clocks in those days. Insufficient losing chances claims can be considered a kind of adjudication, except that the player making an ILC claim can’t win the game that way. It probably wasn’t easy finding master-strength players willing to be present at a tournament to adjudicate games but not play in the tournament.

2

It was a much smaller chess world in 1956. The USCF had less than 2500 members. Most of the tournaments were in major metropolitan areas. New York City was the center of the chess universe for American players. From what I was told by older players who played at that time, the Harkness book was designed to clean up some of the bad and biased practices used in some tournaments in the northeast. By establishing a set of rules and guidelines to follow, Harkness attempted to set up a uniform standard of practice. In the following “Official Chess Handbook,” further adjustments were made to his guidelines.

Harkness’ rules might seem harsh, but they were a step up from the “house rules”, biased pairing practices, and shoddy tournament setups of the era. My old friends told funny and not so funny stories about TDs and the way they used to pair events. The tournaments were few and small, played in smoke filled rooms, and discouraged the participation of kids. Chess was an adults game, to be played to squeeze the last ounce out of each game. Long games with repeating time controls were the norm. To be caught on the wrong side of a miniature (25 moves or less) was an embarrassment. Short draws were looked on as an insult to the game. Prizes were few and small. Players played for pride and reputation. It was a different culture than what we have today.

Tournaments were major events in the club world of the time. When I started playing USCF chess back in 1970, there were only 4 tournaments of note in the Pittsburgh area every year. With a tournament only every three months or so, if you missed one or two, your rating might stay the same for a whole year. Tournaments were large with players hungry to compete. In 1972, when I started to direct, I was handed copies of the Harkness books to familiarize myself with doing pairings. TDs had systems and shortcuts, but the Harkness book was the center of TD practice and rules. Doing tournaments with 70 to 90 players using pairing cards, having the pairings done on time, and keeping wall charts up to date was an all day task with few breaks. Saturdays for the TD could be 18+ hour days with a quick turnaround to be there for adjournments at 8 am on Sunday morning before the 4th round started at 9 am. Any further adjournments had to be completed before the last round was paired. Occasionally, there were adjudications, but these were rare and reserved for the true bitter enders that played on in dead drawn positions or down two pieces and a couple of pawns on a late Saturday evening. Usually placing an adjourned move envelope by the players would lead them to resign or offer a draw. Nobody like to finish adjourned games at 8 am on Sundays.

3

I remember the common third time control being a blazing 20 moves in an hour forever. it was common for one or two games to drag on to 1:00 am, 2:00 am, or 3:00 am. At 20 moves per hour a rude or ignorant player could drag on a dead lost position forever.

Made for some mighty tired TD’s the next day.

4

Harkness takes a dig at unnamed New York tournament directors when describing the lottery system of Swiss pairings, in which pairings within a score group are determined randomly instead of by rating:

5

I do remember the “good old days.” In fact my very first rated game (in 1968) was adjudicated – as a draw. Just about every two-day tournament, had the time limit of 50/2, 25/1, 25/1 etc., with the round times, set at 10:00, 3:00 and 8:00 on Saturday and 10:00 and 3:00 on Sunday. My first round game was adjourned after 5 hours, but my opponent’s 2nd round game was also adjourned, and his 3rd round game went to midnight. I arrived at 8:00 to play off the adjournment, but they decided that my opponent should play his 2nd round adjournment first, and it still was not completed by the scheduled time of the 4th round, so they called in a strong player and he adjudicated that game as well as my game.

None of this seemed strange, by the way. Sure, I was just a kid, playing in my first rated tournament, but the TD was very fair in applying arbitrary procedures. And even as I continued to play in subsequent tournaments, I never had a personal grievance as long as the TD did NOT use his discretion to obviate these prescribed procedures. (In and around Boston, we always had high standards for Tournament Direction. The very proficient Director, George Mirijanian, attributes it to Robert Goodspeed, who was the TD for both the 1964 and 1970 US Opens, I believe.)

It should be mentioned, that in the '60s, only a very small percentage of tournament players knew much opening theory. MCO 10, published in 1968, I believe, was far more comprehensive than prior editions, but there was very little else avaibable in English chess literature on the openings before the dawn of the '70s. We NEEDED the extra time afforded by a 50/2 time control. It was not uncommon to use over an hour for the first 10-15 moves. Today, over half of the participants in an adult event can rattle off the first ten moves in under 5 minutes, but 45+ years ago, it was only the top 10% that had that ability.

Today, the equipment, rulebooks, e-pairing and enhanced TD proficiency makes rated play a much more enjoyable experience. As late as 1976, I remember playing a game at a weeknight club event that went until 2:20 a.m. Thank god I won!

For the record, I don’t remember the Sudden Death provision, which would have seemed very alien back in the days. I never have seen the 1956 Harkness Blue Book, only the 1966(?) edition that I bought at a used book store around 1970.

6

In that time period, our club used the community room for a local bank. Most games finished by eleven, some went to midnight, and a few went on deep toward dawn.

I was responsible for the key to the room and the TD also. After the last game, I would lock the door and the drop the key in the night deposit slot. One night the last game went until nearly 3:00 am. Dropped the key in the night deposit slot and then remembered I had not locked the door! Groan!

Good times!

7

Another oddity of the 1956 rules: only the TDs were allowed to stop both clocks (in today’s terminology, pause the clock), except in the case of a player sealing his move when the game was adjourned. If a player on the move wanted to make a claim and a TD wasn’t immediately available the player would have to look for a TD with his clock running, and his clock would continue to run while the TD ruled on the claim (except for time forfeit claims). If a draw claim was disallowed the player could lose on time. As Harkness said, “Contestants should be sure of their facts when they make claims.”