
2025 PanAms - Part 3
As part of this new way to document all the fun stuff I'm doing as a chess arbitress, I would like to discuss some of the cases and rulings that happened at the event.
This will be the last part of the series I posted about the 2025 PanAms that happened Jan 2-5 in Charlotte, NC, USA - If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, read them first!
The ironic part is that I did not have to rule on any case until the last round. I was joking the night before to a good friend that the arbiter work is really only about 5% of ruling on cases and claims, and the rest of the 95% is running the event. But nevertheless, I'll share some of the cases that we, the 5 arbiters had, collectively.
The event had two sections, 1800+ and u1800 sections.
The 1800+ section had teams with average over 1800-rated, and these players were experienced with rated tournaments, about 80 players were titled from the 190 players in the 44 different teams. These players knew the basic rules.
However the u1800 section had several teams that were composed of players who have never been to a tournament before, let alone play under FIDE rules.
The u1800 section saw some of the more basic cases:
- Arbiter had to enforce a touch move;
- Player lost the game after the second illegal move;
- Players were advised how to properly offer a draw to the opponent;
- Players were advised that they can't use an upside down rook when promoting a pawn to a Queen ;
- Notation rules: since the time control is 90+30, players did have to notate all the way until the end!
The 1800+ section gave us much less work, but there was one very interesting case:
A Threefold repetition claim:
I had my fair share of incorrect rulings when it comes to threefold (some were my fault, some were less so but still, it leaves a big hit on one's self confidence), so I'm hyper alert now and double and triple checking when a ruling is made.
Most of the claims of course are correct, and the top 28 boards (7 matches) were broadcasted, and we had an easier time checking it.
But we had an interesting claim during the last round in one of the lower boards:
A player claimed the draw based on the position occurred three times. I declined the draw because while the position was in-fact three times on the board, but the first time it was his opponent's move (the player claiming it just made the move), and the other two times it was his move (the opponent just made the move). This was quite a bit of time convincing the player that in fact the following needs to happen:
https://arbiters.fide.com/wp-content/uploads/Publications/Manual/Arbiters_Manual_2024.pdf
9.2.3 Positions are considered the same if and only if the same player has the move,
pieces of the same kind and colour occupy the same squares and the possible
moves of all the pieces of both players are the same.
Of course before even beginning to asses the situation, I checked that the player wrote down the move, but did not make it on the board. I asked the opponent that this is a draw offer, does he want to accept it, the answer was no. (note of course that they agreed to a draw 1 move after the ruling was made, so alas...)
Then I went back and asked the player to identify the positions that he thinks are the three times. He did this (they were not consecutive moves, but about 10 moves apart).
I saw that the moves were different right away, but first I wanted to make sure of course. We went to another board and played the moves backward and then onward again from the first occurrence. I was able to demonstrate that the first time he already made the move, and the other two times he did not yet make the move. I think by the end he did finally see it, and understood that the rules stipulate this, but it was a case where I had to stand my ground, which is often not very easy.
Many thanks to Milind Maiti, who is actually one of the players who grew up in SF Bay Area, so he was a familiar face at the event, sending me the pgn so I can include it in the article. This is my first time including a pgn in an article
This concludes my report on the 2025 PanAms. Congratulations to UTRGV for winning 1st place!
Also congratulations to SLU, UTD and Webster for qualifying to the President's Cup!

