Strike two

Name Withheld v Horton, Benasque, July 2010. Position after 18...fxe4

White wrote down the move 19.fxe4, which loses swiftly. He did not play it. He then thought about it, crossed it out and wrote down the move 19.Re3*, which he subsequently played.

This is illegal.

In fact, simply writing the move down before playing it is illegal. The possibility that one might then change it is the whole reason for the law.

Name Withheld v Horton, club match, March 2011. Position after 32...Rc4-c5.

White wrote down the move 33.Rb4, which loses swiftly. He did not play it. He then thought about it, crossed it out and wrote down the move 33.h4, which he subsequently played.

This is illegal.

In fact, simply writing the move down before playing it is illegal. The possibility that one might then change it is the whole reason for the law.

As it happens, the first game was won by Black: the second ended in a draw which did not affect the match result. But let's have a look at the Laws Of Chess: specifically, at article 8, "The recording of the moves".

8.1

In the course of play each player is required to record his own moves and those of his opponent in the correct manner, move after move, as clearly and legibily as possible, in the algebraic notation (See Appendix C), on the scoresheet prescribed for the competition.

It is forbidden to write the moves in advance, unless the player is claiming a draw according to Article 9.2, or 9.3 or adjourning a game according to the Guidelines of Adjourned Games point 1.a.

This is plain enough: "forbidden", save for some clearly-defined exceptions. It should not happen. It is not permitted.

Except that it does happen, and is permitted. Because there is nothing in the rules to say what penalty is applied to those who transgress that rule.

At least, this is true at club level, though it can work differently in tournaments. In the first of the two instances cited above, which took place in an international tournament, I called an arbiter, who applied no penalty but did inform the other player that the action was illegal, which I understand is a generally applied procedure (a second infraction resulting in, I think, a warning, and a third in loss of the game).

Which is OK as far as it goes, though it is at very least strange to have an infracton of the rules for which there is no penalty. But in the second instance, there was no arbiter to whom I could appeal, and had to point out the infraction to my team captain - who was unaware the rule existed. My opponent, who said he was aware, was apologetic, though he continued to do the same thing, to transgress the same rule, until the end of the game.

As you may gather, I am not entirely happy about this. I don't like being in a position where I am playing to one version of the rules and my opponent is playing to another. I also don't like being in a position where drawing attention to those rules is not effective, and hence causes more inconvenience to the player who complains about a breach of the rules than is caused to the player who commits it.

It's a relatively new rule, of course, and one that goes directly against what many of us learned and practised, which was to write down the move first and play it only after some further thought. I learned that from Simon Webb, and also, I think, from Kotov, and followed their advice for perhaps twenty years.

So when the rule was made, on the grounds that writing the move in advance constituted the making and consulting of notes, it required took a certain amount of unlearning of well-establish habits, a process a lot of players have never undergone. Which may explain why, in my experience, it's one of the most-ignored rules in the book (along with, for instance, adjusting the pieces with the opponent's clock running and not recording draw offers). It's difficult for people to change. I appreciate that. But it is either a rule or it is not. And if there is no penalty for breaking that rule and doing the very thing the rule is supposed to prevent, what purpose has the rule?

I think there are two issues here. One is that the Laws of Chess make great deal of reference to arbiters, and yet are meant to apply in many situations where there are no arbiters present. This renders a little problematic the preamble, in the Laws, which states:

the Laws of Chess cannot cover all possible situations that may arise during a game, nor can they regulate all administrative questions. Where cases are not precisely regulated by an Article of the Laws, it should be possible to reach a correct decision by studying analogous situations which are discussed in the Laws. The Laws assume that arbiters have the necessary competence, sound judgement and absolute objectivity. Too detailed a rule might deprive the arbiter of his freedom of judgement and thus prevent him from finding the solution to a problem dictated by fairness, logic and special factors.

Perfectly reasonable, but the problem is that the Laws frequently need to be interpreted and applied by people who do not "have the necessary competence, sound judgement and absolute objectivity". And this seems to me to require a slightly different, tighter approach.

The second is the rule itself. I've never liked it much. When it was introduced I thought it an over-pedantic interpretation of what constituted a note, although there are many others who think it a good rule and a necessary one. Either way, if you're going to have a rule, then players should abide by it, and if they don't, then either set out clearly what should happen, or don't have the rule at all.

As it goes, there's a very close analogy elsewhere in the Laws, and one with which we're all familiar, in which the player who has clearly made a selection is prevented from changing it. It's in Article 4, "The act of moving the pieces".

4.3

Except as provided in Article 4.2, if the player having the move deliberately touches on the chessboard:

a.
one or more of his own pieces, he must move the first piece touched which can be moved.

It's analogous to touching a piece. Everybody knows that if you touch a piece, you have to move it: it requires no arbiter to say so.

So all right. Suppose we looked at 8.1 the same way? We might amend it as follows:

It is forbidden to write the moves in advance, unless the player is claiming a draw according to Article 9.2, or 9.3 or adjourning a game according to the Guidelines of Adjourned Games point 1.a. If a move is written in advance, the player who has done so shall be obliged to play it.

Too draconian? Probably. All right, how about this?

It is forbidden to write the moves in advance, unless the player is claiming a draw according to Article 9.2, or 9.3 or adjourning a game according to the Guidelines of Adjourned Games point 1.a. If a player does write a move in advance of playing it, and subsequently plays another, they should be warned on the first occasion, and on the second, required to play the move originally written.

Or similar. I'm up for alternative suggestions. What I'm not up for is playing to rules that other people aren't expected to play to.

Yes, of course I can see objections to this - suppose for instance that the original move has been scrubbed out so thoroughly as to be impossible to reconstruct? - and yes, of course I can see how people might feel it's taking a small point too seriously. (Then again, I thought that when the rule was created.) But people playing by different rules is something to take seriously. As is having rules which you don't enforce.

If this was just a one-off, it'd be a different story. But that's twice in less than a year, and only the two most recent occurrences of several in my games: and if it's repeatedly happening to me, my guess is that it is happening all the time. I think it's stupid to have rules that in practice are not applied, and wrong to put players in the position where they can't expect them to apply. So let us either enforce it, or let us not have the rule at all. For having laws which are not enforced brings the law itself into disrepute.



[* actually 19.Te3, the Spanish for rook being torre.]