A crazy tournament discussion

Hi everyone I recently had a dispute at a tournament and I wanted to get your opinions:

In round 4 in a 25+10 USCF Tournament my opponent touched his queen on his turn. Then he moved his rook and then paused the clock even though I hadn't called illegal move. In addition I never saw him touch his queen in the first place. After that he said that he made an illegal move and wanted to redo it. It was at this moment when I realized that he did this to prevent from flagging. ( he had literally less than one second!) I told him it was fine to just redo it knowing he would flag and I asked him if he was ready. He gave a head nod and obviously when I started the clock he flagged. I was ready to reset the board as I had clearly won when he stopped me and called the arbiter. He said that he was not ready even after I had asked him and he said he wanted a redo. I said that he made the illegal move and he shouldn't be able to call his own move to get his time back. He then said to reset the position and to make a move. Obviously I called this unfair as he had clearly flagged and I should get the win. When the arbiter finally came to a decision, he said to play on and I could talk to him after the tournament was over. This decision made no sense but because it was getting late I resumed the game and my opponent got his time back. After this unfair decision, I ended up losing in a winning position due to time pressure/feeling over whelmed with the entire situation. When I talked to the tournament directors (some high schoolers) they said that they didn't know what to do and for the time being they would have to give the win to my opponent, the most unreasonable result. Like at minimum it should have been a draw if not a win. My opponents actions violate these USCF rules.

1. Touch-Move Rule (USCF Rule 10A)

• If your opponent touched his queen, he was obliged to move it if a legal move with the queen was available.

• Since you didn’t see him touch it, you couldn’t enforce it, but he cannot just call it on himself to undo a move after making another one.

2. Illegal Move Procedure (USCF Rule 11D1, 11D2, 11D3)

• An illegal move must be completed and pressed on the clock for it to count as illegal.

• A player cannot simply declare their own move illegal in order to reset.

• Once the move was made and the clock pressed, if it was indeed illegal, you (not him) would have the right to claim it.

3. Flagging Rule (USCF Rule 14A1, 14A2)

• A player loses on time if their flag falls before making the required number of moves.

• In your case, he had <1 second and essentially tried to avoid flagging by calling his own illegal move — which is not permitted.

• If his flag fell during this sequence, you should have had a clear win on time.

4. Improper Intervention (USCF Rule 20)

• Players should not stop the clock or interfere unless making a valid claim (draw, illegal move by the opponent, etc.).

• Your opponent stopping the clock to “claim” his own illegal move was misuse of the clock.

5. What the Arbiter Should Have Ruled

• Since your opponent had already flagged, the correct ruling was: you win on time.

• At minimum, if there had been confusion, the ruling should have been a draw (never giving your opponent the win).

• Allowing him to reset and continue with added time was a misapplication of USCF rules.Now they told me to message the USCF Directors about this along with the tournament director. Thank you for reading and let me know your thoughts

In addition everyone there agreed with me including Fide Master Ryan Porter @retropwr

you should be on uscf forums instead, imo.

with the information you've provided, the point belongs to you. file an appeal with uscf, which will start an investigation. flag falling can only be overruled by checkmate on the board.

edit: in addition, you have learned a valuable lesson. summon the td as soon as procedure is violated. the moment he stopped his own clock, you should have notified one.

ok thank you, is there a seperate club for uscf forum?

I’m not gonna take sides on this dispute since I was actually at that tournament and it was definitely a commotion and a hard call for the TDs (who have already appealed to US Chess so the result may be overturned, and from what you’re saying definitely seems like it should be a clear cut case), but I’m just gonna say that I wouldn’t take what AI (which seems to have written the rule book section of this post) has to say as definitive proof that you were correct unless you’re directly reading the source to confirm it

https://forum.uschess.org/c/running-chess-tournaments/8

this should work. plenty of people will be willing to help you clarify the situation and perhaps even guide you through the appeals process

ok thank you

with this new information, i would suggest you instead stay in contact with the tournament directors rather than trying to clarify the issue in forums or submitting an appeal as it seems that the event directors are filing an appeal on your behalf. confirm this with them.

furthermore: application of tournament rules is about cutting through extraneous details. regardless of all the rules that could apply to the situation, the applicable rule is flagging. there are very few scenarios where a fallen flag is rolled back. this is not one of them.

Oh yeah for sure, I think USCF should find a way to reach out to both parties while in contact with the TDs and try to piece together the story, the way I interpreted the situation they had made a decision and was appealing to ask if they made the right choice, but obviously if they had it wrong to begin with it would be important to make sure they got the full story correct in the first place

ok thank you everyone

Players making an illegal move never get time added to their own clock. If you had claimed an illegal move for your opponent, you could have had time added to your clock and your opponent should have been left with the time they had at the clock pause.

Sorry i must have mis typed. He made an illegal move paused the clock without pressing it. Then when i asked if he was ready he said yes with 1 sec and flagged. Then he called the arbiters and got that one second back. Does this make sense? @Martin_Stahl For more details plz send me a DM

If the TD allowed the clock to be reset to 1 sec then they should have given you extra time due to the illegal move.

they gave me 2 minutes additional but i feel that further measures should have been taken with the reasons above shouldn't i have been awarded a win or atleast a draw. I mean he did flag while wronfully calling illegal move and pausing clock without pressing his.

An illegal move is not illegal until the move neither determined nor completed until starting the opponent's clock. Pausing the clock is done for rulings. If you did not clarify what had happened then the most common case when a TD is called over is when an illegal move is actually completed, and hardly anybody calls their own illegal move. With no further information given than what was initially mentioned I'd expect more than 95% to assume that the move really had been completed, and at least 50% to accept both players agreeing it is an illegal move without checking the actual illegality. And with that amount of time left a TD should not intervene unless called in.

The move would have to actually be illegal. Playing an otherwise legal move while violating touch move is improper, not illegal (and it still isn't illegal unless the opponent's clock was started).

Can it be overruled with timeout vs insufficient material if the last move is taking the last piece then flagging before hitting the clock?

there were multiple pieces on the board so this isn't the case

Technically it was not the move that was illegal, but he moved the rook when he touched the queen which counts as illegal. Although since he didn't press the clock, the illegal move doesn't count then right?

Moving the rook was improper, not illegal, under USCF rules (FIDE rules are stricter). You would have the right to ask your opponent to move the queen instead or you could ignore the touch on the queen (seeing as the queen was picked up rather than having an inadvertent brushing touch - and assuming that the picking up of the queen wasn't merely to reset a piece that had been knocked over or displaced to an incorrect square so it would not be considered an obvious adjustment even in the absence of a declaration of adjustment).

In any case, until the clock is pressed to start an opponent's clock a move is not yet illegal (it is still their move and can still be corrected before triggering actual illegality). Remember that for blitz tournaments having any illegal move triggering loss of game and wait until the clock is hit, and yours is started, before claiming a win.

So what would you say should happen @jetoba