Category Archives: The Laws of Chess

Chess etiquette and the virtual handshake

Like other sports, chess has its own code of conduct and its own idea of what constitutes sporting and unsporting behaviour. Some types of bad behaviour are expressely forbidden. For example you are not allowed to move a piece with one hand and press the clock with the other (Article 6.2.3 of the FIDE Laws of Chess), because this is an artificial attempt to shorten one’s own clock time and lengthen the opponent’s clock time. It is also forbidden to distract or annoy the opponent in any way during the game (Article 11.5).

One might argue that chess etiquette simply reflects the more general obligation to treat other human beings with respect and consideration. So, although not required by the rules of the game, it is the done thing to shake your opponent’s hand at the start and end of the game, and to say something polite like “Good luck” at the start and “Well played” or “Thanks for the game” at the end.

Not everyone behaves correctly, or course. Some of my opponents have remarked at the end of the game, “You were lucky to win that,” or “This was not one of your better games,” or “Tonight you did not play to your grade” (say that last one in a Russian accent and you’ll know who I mean).

Similar considerations apply in online correspondence chess, although notions of etiquette may seem more remote when you cannot see or hear your opponent. “Distracting your opponent” doesn’t have the same force when you have days rather than minutes to make a move, and you don’t have to sit at the computer or stay in the same room the whole time.

Even so, I was told at the start of my correspondence career that it is good practice at the start of a game to send a greeting or best wishes to your opponent. And I can see the point of ending the game on a gracious note as well. I regard this sort of thing as a virtual handshake.

What happens if your opponent does something during the game to which you object, but which is not serious enough to engage the ICCF code of conduct? For example if your opponent turns down a draw offer in a position which is objectively drawn, simply because he is higher-rated. This is, in my view, a sign of disrespect. I am often tempted to make some cutting remark in a message with my next move. Maybe “You must be either arrogant or stupid.” Or “I can recommend a basic guide to rook and pawn endings.” Or just “Seriously?”

However, I have so far managed to restrain myself. I know that it would be unacceptable to say these things over the board and I am trying to apply the same standards online. It’s better to remain silent and just keep on making moves.

Even so, I don’t think players should be able to get away with it, so I do allow myself a little licence. In respect of abortive draw offers, when the game comes to an end I don’t make the usual pleasant remark. Instead I say nothing at all. This is the virtual equivalent of refusing to shake hands. It doesn’t have the same effect if your opponent cannot see you ignoring his outstretched hand, but I feel that I am making a point, at least virtually.

Another, more concrete, way of expressing disapproval is if your opponent unreasonably declines your draw offer and the position later simplifies to one with 7 or fewer pieces on the board and so is amenable to a tablebase claim. In these situations I will (obviously) check that the tablebase verdict is going to be a draw, then I will simply claim the draw without making a further offer. Similarly if my opponent plays on in a losing position and we reduce to 7 pieces, I will simply claim a tablebase win.

By extension, if a position is drawn, and there are 7 or fewer pieces on the board, and neither side has made a draw offer, I regard it as bad practice to claim the tablebase draw without first offering the draw to your opponent.

Determining colours, and the default time

Leave a Reply

As a former civil servant, I like to know what I’m talking about before I express an opinion on something. They call it Evidence-Based Decision-Making, or in other words, Knowledge is Power.

The London League is in the process of revising its rules. Back in October, an issue arose about whether teams should be selected on playing strength or in rating order. This blog carried out some research on the practice in other chess leagues the length and breadth of the land. The results appeared in the post The board order in league chess. Today we address two further issues: (1) how do you decide which team has white or black on each board; and (2) if you’re not there at the start, how much time do you have before you lose on default?

Determining colours

Traditionally the two teams would toss for colours and the winner would choose either white or black on top board (with the colours alternating down the board order). This was open to abuse in that if your player had prepared a particular line as white or black, winning the toss meant you could ensure the player got the preferred colour. So a refinement was to remove the choice and if you won the toss you automatically got a specified colour (in practice white) on top board.

Tossing for colours has its own issues: for example at what time before the scheduled start do you decide colours, and what happens if one team is not represented at the appointed time, for example running late in travelling to the venue? You could decide that the team which was there on time automatically had white on top board – at the risk of annoying the other team which might be late through no fault of its own.

So a further refinement – and this may reflect a modern trend towards simplification in procedure – was to eliminate the toss altogether and automatically allocate colours by a pre-determined principle, for example the home team or away team would always have white on odd boards.

Which brings us to the research. There are 86 chess leagues in England (excluding junior-only and online leagues). In 63 of these, the league rules are available online. (Previously it was 62, but one has emerged since then.) This is the frequency of the different options for determining colours.

home team has black on odd boards – 35
home team has white on odd boards – 5
toss for colours, winner chooses – 10
toss for colours, winner has white on odd boards – 9
not stated – 4.

In the London League, the fourth of these applies. Teams toss for colours and the winner automatically has white on odd boards.

The research shows that the clear preference in practice is for the home team to have black on odd boards. This must reflect the disadvantage to the away team in having to travel to the venue. This works fine if teams play their home matches at their home venue and their away matches at the opposition venue. But in some cases, including the London League, several clubs play all their matches at their home venue rather than a central league venue. Under this rule, their top board would have black in every game. That’s not a desirable outcome. The available information does not disclose – at least, not without a lot more digging – how many leagues feature clubs that always play at home and how many clubs are affected in each case. So we don’t know whether the London League is unique. If it’s not unique, the leagues which allocate colours automatically have not addressed the issue.

For the London League, a simple but unique solution has been proposed. This is that the home team has white on odd boards if the date of the match falls on days 1 to 15 of the month, and black on odd boards if it falls on days 16 to 31. Assuming a natural layout of the fixtures, roughly half of the fixtures would fall in each of the first and second halves of the month, so the colour distribution would be roughly even. At the time of posting, the proposal remains under consideration internally.

The default time

Here too, practice varies. The official FIDE Laws of Chess take a hardline approach:

6.6 a. Any player who arrives at the chessboard after the start of the session shall lose the game. Thus the default time is 0 minutes. The rules of a competition may specify otherwise.

This rule was introduced a number of years ago. It seems appropriate in official FIDE events, which are strictly controlled. In less formal conditions – applying in the typical weekend tournament in England, and in league chess played on a weekday evening – it would be completely impractical. Hence the discretion for local rules to specify otherwise. And they have done. There are no known cases in English league chess where the default time is 0 minutes.

In the 63 leagues where information is available, the default time is as shown below.

30 minutes – 30
45 minutes – 8
60 minutes – 18
time control (75+ minutes) – 2
not stated – 5.

In the two leagues with a “time control” default system, the player may turn up at any time while the clock is still running, losing only when the time control is reached. In one case this is 75 minutes. In the other, a range of time controls are available and 75 minutes is the minimum.

The available information does not disclose the reasons for deciding on a particular default time in each league. Rules are rules and they rarely include explanatory material.

If you were developing a set of rules based on reason and logic, you might decide on a principled approach so that (for example) the default time was half the time available for the game. So if you had 90 minutes to make all your moves, you would have 45 minutes after the start to arrive at the board. Arriving just before the cut-off would still leave enough time for a sensible game.

An alternative approach would be to recognise that leagues operate in different circumstances and that no one solution would suit every league. If the league operated in a very small catchment area, and the travelling time to the venue was not significant, it might be appropriate to specify the short default time of 30 minutes. In other leagues, for example in large metropolitan areas, players might need longer to reach the venue. This may be what happens in practice – more detailed research would be needed to establish a correlation.

In the London League, which covers a large area, the current default time is 60 minutes. This is long enough for any reasonable journey. The downsides are, first, that if you’re present and your opponent is not, and you don’t know whether your opponent is running late or has simply forgotten there’s a match on that night, it’s a long time to wait for a no-show. And second, that if your opponent turns up just inside 60 minutes, with an incremental time control allowing a game time of 75 minutes, it’s practically impossible for the latecomer to play a serious game.

At its AGM in 2022, the London League considered a motion from one club to reduce the default time from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. This was no doubt motivated by the downsides of the longer default time. It was, however, clear from the debate that 30 minutes was in practice too short a default time for a league whose catchment area was the whole of London. Players could well miss the cut-off for no fault of their own, for example problems on public transport (and, more recently, one might add industrial action resulting a reduced service or none at all). The motion was defeated by 18 votes to 4.

During the debate, a compromise was suggested of a default time of 45 minutes. This reflected the experience of the person proposing the compromise (no prizes for guessing who that was) that players often turned up within 45 minutes of the start, but he did not recall anyone turning up between 45 and 60 minutes late. So nothing would be lost, and players wouldn’t have to wait a whole hour for a no-show. The amendment was defeated by 12 votes to 9. This was not because the majority of the clubs represented thought it was a bad idea in itself. Rather, it was tabled at no notice, and they had not been able to consult their membership. So in 2023, the proposal (and again this is still under consideration, well in advance of the summer AGM) is to reduce the default time from 60 minutes to 45 minutes.

Anyway, the lesson for any person of a sound mind is, Vote For Barking – You Know It Makes Sense.

Endgame tablebases

Leave a Reply

I’m going to start this post by quoting an extract from the Wikipedia entry, since it says what I want to say and I don’t see the point of paraphrasing it.

An endgame tablebase is a computerized database that contains precalculated exhaustive analysis of chess endgame positions. It is typically used by a computer chess engine during play, or by a human or computer that is retrospectively analysing a game that has already been played.

The tablebase contains the game-theoretical value (win, loss, or draw) in each possible position, and how many moves it would take to achieve that result with perfect play. Thus, the tablebase acts as an oracle, always providing the optimal moves. Typically the database records each possible position with certain pieces remaining on the board, and the best moves with White to move and with Black to move.

Tablebases are generated by retrograde analysis, working backward from a checkmated position. By 2005, all chess positions with up to six pieces, including the two kings, had been solved. By August 2012, tablebases had solved chess for almost every position with up to seven pieces, but the positions with a lone king versus a king and five pieces were omitted because they were considered to be “rather obvious.”^[1][2] These positions were included by August 2018.^[3] As of 2022, work is still underway to solve all eight-piece positions.

Tablebases sometimes come with a name as a prefix, e.g. Nalimov, Lomonosov, Syzygy. Eugene Nalimov is a computer programmer who generated the first tablebases in the 1990s. Lomonosov is the name of a Russian supercomputer. Syzygy is an astronomical term describing the occurrence of three celestial bodies in a straight line. No, I don’t know what that has to do with chess either. Syzygy 7-piece tablebases are the most recent. These are used by the International Correspondence Chess Federation.

What is the practical use of a tablebase in correspondence chess? In my experience the tablebase is a means of bringing a game to an end quickly and so achieving a draw or a win, when your opponent cannot or will not see this, and particularly when he or she has slowed the game down in order to delay the inevitable. The ICCF rules allow you to claim a win or draw by reference to a tablebase where there are no more than seven pieces on the board. Here’s an example from one of Barking’s games earlier this year.

White: Maurizio Mangiarotti (1958), Black: Rodney Barking (1915).
D45: QGD Semi-Slav.

Yes, I know there are more than seven pieces… This was the position after White’s 41st move. Earlier I had given up my queen for a rook and bishop. As all the pieces are on one side of the board, and there are no passed pawns, Black can hold the draw easily enough and in fact the evaluation of one of the chess engines I use is 0.00. However, White can continue the game for quite a long time just by probing with the queen.

As I’m not winning this position, there’s no advantage to me in prolonging it. What’s the quickest way out? Answer: sacrifice some material…
41…Bxh4! 42.gxh4 Rxg4+ 43.Kh3 h5

Despite the material difference, this position is actually drawn. Black has constructed a fortress. There is no way the white king can penetrate Black’s defences. I offered a draw, which my opponent accepted.

The point that’s relevant to this post, and obviously I checked this before going nuclear, is that the position is a tablebase draw as well. I would have claimed a draw by reference to the ICCF tablebase if my opponent had not co-operated. This is what the tablebase evaluation looks like:

Interestingly, the various engines I use all evaluate this position differently. The strongest of them has White at +0.81 (approaching a clear advantage, but not yet winning). The weakest has White at +4.21 (a trivial win). I guess none of the engines has the 7-piece tablebase programmed in. Maybe that should not be a surprise as the storage size you need for a tablebase is absolutely huge.

I was going to give a further example, another game against my Austrian opponent Herr Wiesinger. We have reached a rook and pawn ending where the Austrian is totally lost. He knows this and has slowed the game down to a funereal pace. Unfortunately there are still eight pieces on the board so we are just out of tablebase range. I expect one of his pawns to drop off very soon (when he finally gets round to moving) and then it will be Goodnight Vienna.

So much for correspondence chess. What about tablebases in OTB chess? Now here’s a thing. Chess leagues are increasingly using incremental time controls. These carry the risk that a game may still be going on at the end of the playing session. Back in the day, if the two players couldn’t agree on the outcome, these games were resolved either by adjournment to a later date or by adjudication. Neither of these is ideal. Adjournments simply add to fixture congestion. Adjudications take the result of the game out of the hands of the players and transfer it to a third party (in Barking’s eyes this is a detestable practice).

The London League used to rely solely on adjournments, following a playing session of 30 moves in 90 minutes. Those days have gone. At some point in the past decade, the League introduced an incremental time control of G75 + 15. So far, there have been no documented cases of games being unresolved at the end of the playing session. But adjudication is available as a backup if needed.

This season, and as far as I know this is the first time this has happened in English league chess, tablebase decision-making has been introduced. If a game is unfinished, and there are no more than seven pieces on the board, the outcome is determined by reference to a tablebase rather than adjudication. This has the advantage of determining the outcome by objective rather subjective means since you know with certainty what will happen with perfect play on both sides, rather than relying on the human (no doubt computer-assisted) determination of the adjudicator. The relevant London League rule is as follows:

C8. UNFINISHED GAMES
C8.1 If any game is unfinished at the end of the session, both players and both captains shall record the position on the board. If the two sides cannot agree a result, then –

(a) if no more than 7 pieces remain on the board, the result shall be determined by reference to a tablebase such as the Syzygy endgame tablebase at
https://syzygy-tables.info/?fen=4k3/8/8/8/8/8/8/4K3_w_-_-_0_1;

(b) In other cases, both sides shall submit an adjudication claim to the league secretary together with a fee of £10. If only one claim is made, it shall be upheld without adjudication. Either side may appeal against an adjudication decision, providing supporting evidence, and on payment of a further fee of £10. The fees shall be returned to the relevant side if no adjudication is needed or if an appeal succeeds.

Whoever thought of this deserves a medal. Who says space can’t be conquered?!

The Niemann cheating controversy

1 Reply

It’s rare for an event to ignite not just the chess world but the world outside. Two previous events stand out, in positive ways: the Fischer–Spassky world championship match at Reykjavik in 1972, and more recently the Netflix drama The Queen’s Gambit which has inspired a generation of young female players. Now we have something decidedly negative which has the potential to turn people off the game completely.

It is beyond doubt that Niemann has cheated at online chess. Either two times or a hundred times, depending on who you believe. But there is no evidence that he has cheated at over the board chess. Of course there are suspicions: how did he gain 100 FIDE rating points so quickly, and how did he inflict a rare defeat on the strongest player in the world? Carlsen, and many others, clearly believe he must be up to something. Actual proof of underhand methods is another matter.

Niemann is clearly discredited online, but what does the OTB future hold for him? On one view, he has not been shown to cheat in this mode, and he will surely be scrutinised more closely than any other player in future. As if even his bowel movements will be watched. He, of all players, has no opportunity for wrongdoing. And it is an important principle in judicial and quasi-judicial matters that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

But this is to assume that the worlds of online chess and OTB chess can be clearly separated. Yes, they have different procedures, and ratings in one form do not cross over to the other. But it is the same game involving the same mental and psychological processes. Knowing that your opponent has cheated online is bound to affect your play against the same opponent over the board. There is always the possibility that your opponent may have found some ingenious and hitherto undetected method of gaining an unfair advantage. Once the taint arrives, it’s very hard to make it go away.

It would not be surprising if more chess players followed Carlsen’s lead and theatrically resigned against Niemann in the early stages of the game – or even refused to play him altogether. When these things reach a critical mass, what can the chess authorities do? One option would be to ban Niemann from OTB chess. But that is hard to reconcile with notions of fair play.

Maybe the solution lies with Niemann himself. While maintaining his innocence in the OTB format, he could acknowledge the furore that his online actions have caused and the psychological problem he has inflicted on his opponents. He could voluntarily withdraw from all forms of chess and self-isolate for a significant time, at least a year. And then come back to the OTB world and start again. He would be a weaker player through lack of practice, but the chess world might have calmed down by then and might be ready to accept him on equal terms.

Illegal moves

Leave a Reply

Has this ever happened to you? Your opponent makes an illegal move, for some reason you don’t notice that it’s illegal, and instead of stopping the clock to sort things out, you play a normal move and the game continues. This happened to me twice last season. What interested me most was the accompanying thought processes. In both cases the illegal move left me dumbfounded and thinking something like this: “I completely overlooked this move. I had no idea he / she could play that. What do I do now?”

What happens here is that when you look at a position, and consider what your opponent might do, your mind automatically filters out illegal moves. Not just the obvious ones like moving the king four squares instead of one, but anything that contravenes the laws of chess. So when your opponent then makes an illegal move, you’re totally unprepared for it.

Position 1 – Opponent A v Rodney Barking

Black to move. I am totally winning this position. I am about to queen with check. I wandered off to find a spare black queen, which had the effect of breaking my concentration. On returning I played 39…c1=Q+ and sat back waiting for my opponent to resign. After some thought my opponent ignored the check and responded with a totally unexpected counter-attacking move, 40.hxg6, opening up my kingside defences. I was so shaken by this that you could have knocked me sideways. How best to defend my king? I played 40…Qh6.

My opponent then became very agitated and started moving pieces around the board in a random fashion. I asked if this was a resignation. No response. I asked again. No response. So I stopped the clock, believing the game to be over, and reset the board in the starting position, before noting a black win on the match result sheet. Only later did I discover that my opponent was deaf and could not hear what I was saying. My opponent was agitated on seeing the illegal move and was trying to correct it. I raised this with the opposition captain, expecting a challenge to the result of the game, but the captain let it stand. Apparently my opponent had done this in another game earlier in the season and everyone found it rather embarrassing.

Position 2 – Rodney Barking v Opponent B

This is a Caro-Kann Advance Variation where I have sacrificed a pawn in order to immobilise my opponent’s kingside. The immediate threat is to capture the bishop on f8. Black doesn’t have a good reply. 15…Nf6 and 15…Qe8 both lose material, so Black has to move the king to d7 or c7 when I can win in straightforward fashion by rapidly opening the queenside. So I was completely surprised when my opponent castled into safety with 15…0-0-0. My attack had disappeared. I developed my queenside, and won the game eventually, although a better plan would have been to double rooks on the f-file, forcing …Qe8 to defend the bishop, allowing me to capture the pawn on e6 and open up the centre. I did not see the illegal move until I inputted the moves on the computer later, and when I reached 15…0-0-0 the computer refused to move and just sat there and stared at me.

How do you stop this sort of thing happening in future? When your opponent makes a completely unexpected move, don’t just accept it and plan your response, but take a moment to look at the position afresh and work out why you didn’t see it. Then you can stop the clock and claim an extra two minutes for the illegal move.