This very reasonable sentiment, IMO, makes the best possible case against the proposed rule change.
Under normal circumstances, I’d deny the claim. The alleged offender is using his own time, and I find nothing in this particular behavior that is either disallowed by rule or offensive to any reasonable person.
This statement is further evidence that this proposed rule is not a good idea. A good maxim for aspiring rulemakers is, “To be terrific, you must be specific.” The lack of specificity and the virtual impossibility of practical enforcement are major causes for concern.
Not to mention the fact that the people who think this is annoying seem to be a minority.
Now if you want to have more rules in the rulebook, I modestly propose that we should have a rule against picking up a piece about to be moved and pretending it is a machine gun, firing the piece/machine gun at the opponent’s pieces and making “realistic” machine-gun noises with your mouth. This style of moving is popular with some of the players in my tournaments. It doesn’t seem to annoy their opponents, but it annoys me. I think GeneM should apply his rule-writing talents to this “problem”.
A local kid does the lingering thing on almost every move and also “squeezes”; while the piece is on the new square he starts removing his fingers, then presses them on the piece again, repeating this cycle a few times. Sometimes he clearly loses contact with the piece during this squeezing episode. Someday someone’s going to call him on it after a move they don’t want him to take back and there’s going to be a scene.
I made my comments on “lingering” more than a little tongue in cheek. Legislating in this fashion over a trivial occurrence of behavior merely clutters up the Rulebook, which is already a weighty tome, especially when you stuff in a copy of the updates. It is getting to the point where you have to use two rubber bands (“gum bands” for my fellow Pittsburghers) in order to keep it all together.
As to “hovering”, the offender should beware!. Your opponent may think you are offering a draw, shake your hand, and then run to the pairing sheet to mark the result. The TD might interpret your behavior against you! So, keep your mitts away from or above the board.
I would only uphold the annoyance claim if I had reason to believe that the player was deliberately messing with the pieces in order to gain some perceived psychological advantage. In other words, if I thought that he was deliberately holding the piece off the board because he believed it annoyed the opponent, then I would uphold the annoyance claim.
In most “lingering” cases, I would suspect that someone was just a bit timid and wasn’t sure about his moves. In that case, I would allow any variation of lingering that didn’t violate the touch move rule.
ETA: I would be against any proposed rule change for reasons already expressed by other posters. Keep the rulebook simple.
Ah, no. There are many things that a player can do that would violate the “annoying behavior” rule and that would be legal EXCEPT that the way they’re being done is annoying. A player that moves a piece and changes his mind before releasing it on a square has the right to pick a different square. That doesn’t mean his gets to just keep trying out one square after another over a long period of time (yes, this is a subjective standard, that’s why it’ll be up to the TD to decide how long this can go on before it’s annoying). Moving that way would be annoying to anybody and would greatly interfere with the opponent’s ability to analyze the position.
At some point, the player should just be expected to return the piece to its original square until he’s made up his mind again.
This last weekend at a tournament one of my oponents (a kid) picked up a piece, put it on a square, and then put it back on the original square, afterwhich he took his hand off the piece. I told him it was touch move and he said yes, he just wanted to think about where to put the piece. After 20 minutes he finally moved it. But it caused me to become distracted and anxious at the possibility of a touch move denial and a subsequent argument. Should he have had to put the piece on the sqare he touched inmediately, or is he allowed as much time as his clock will permit and then move it anyplace legal?
If in touch move, lingering move, how about a player who touch a King in check and wants to move a different piece he touch to avoid checkmate and tells you that he can not walk into a mate and his King has a square he can legally move to? How’s that for a touch move. And even tells you that you don’t know the touch move rule! Do you have one like that? I’d take a linger mover mentioned above, at least I know he is going to move that piece and he in fact wasting his own time, and maybe his flag fall while still having the piece on his hand then call “your flag fell!”.
