A crazy tournament discussion

Fascinating question. The answer is no. Checkmate is a special circumstance because it ends the game, no questions asked, therefore the clock becomes irrelevant. However (this is an important caveat) the rule states that checkmate must be delivered before the clock falls. This can create some very tense arguments.

What you're asking is easily explained in that context. Creating the circumstances to support an insufficient material claim without completing your move by hitting the clock is not sufficient to overrule the clock, because your move does not create a new legal position until that procedure is completed. Therefore, for the purposes of the draw claim, the TD has to refer to the last legal position, which was the position after your opponent's legal move, not your incomplete move.

I understand you want to fix this problem, but it's not that big of a deal, I am 1750 uscf and it has happened to me before in a tournament where my opponent called an illegal move on himself. Also, the rules state that you should get twoo added minutes if your opponent makes an illegal move.

Assuming the other player was in the wrong, wouldn’t you probably be pissed if someone rated several hundred points above you lost fair and square and then cheated their way out of a loss? The 2 minutes is almost insignificant here when the argument is that the game should have ended on the spot because of the flag fall.

Thank you ChessmasterGS, according to a rating estimator, if the game is counted as a loss i get 30 points, if a draw then 80 points and if a win then 120 points. So in other words it is quite a big deal

Odds are that if your clock was started to complete the move then you would have called touch move. The position would have been returned to just after your last move and he would have had one second to move the queen (I'd be able to do that an I am no spring chicken). The TD might have given you two minutes as the standard penalty for a violation (with the occasional TD erroneously thinking a touch move violation is also an illegal move even under USCF rules) but most TDs would only give a warning for a first offense.

So if your clock had been started after the rook move then virtually the same thing that did happen would have happened except that you might not have received the two minutes.

Ok thank you

BlueCrazyKiwi,

Has the game been ruled on with higher level adjudication? Was this game a Blitz game or regular or quick?

As the post says, it’s 25+10 (so dual rated regular and quick)

When do you expect a ruling? I am interested to know if a player can claim his own illegal move. Even, how does his claim give him the time he needed to stay in the game? In time pressure dual rated illegal moves must be within the last 2 moves to be counted. It seems that you did not move, so that was in the last 2 moves if your opponent had only a second left.

One second would probably not be enough time to return the rook and move the queen. Completing the rook move by starting the opponent's clock immediately followed by admitting the touch move violation (not an erroneous illegal move determination unless the rook move really was illegal even if the rook had been touched first) would, at worst for the rook-mover, have given the same result and might not have had two minutes added to the opponent.

A floor TD can be appealed up the chain to the chief TD (if it is a specious series of appeals that will obviously fail then there is a significant risk of annoying the TD staff. A Chief TD can be appealed to a special referee or an appeals committee (with TDs having a certification level at least as high as the TD being appealed), but such appeals can be disallowed if it can seriously impact the tournament (25+10 can easily be adversely affected by even one long appeal).

After that an appeal is filed with US Chess, the appropriate committee(s) decide whether or not to accept it while taking one week to two months to make the decision, and if it is accepted the TD has 30 days to respond, followed by the committee making a decision which can take one week to three months. Some edge cases can take longer to decide.

BlueCrazyKiwi,

Did you appeal the decision within the time alloted by the TD or did you leave it up to him/her to appeal or not?

BlueCrazyKiwi will have to be more rigid from the beginning next time that the TD and the opponent relinquishes to the rules if there is a next time. The TD did say that he or she did not know what to do, right? The TD needs to be ready to do what is needed to provide the correct response. If it took a couple of minutes of research and/or collective TD discussion, that would have been allowed.

If this context helps, the tournament was a small tournament with only around 60 players, and there was a team of around 2-4 floor TDs/assistants who were probably around Club TD level and have likely never encountered such an issue before. It was reported directly to a TD who later brought in the Chief TD as well (or maybe after the two players argued for a while, I dunno specifics because I was in an endgame at that time and wasn’t paying attention) and the TDs spent a long time (maybe 15 min or so) deliberating over the issue before making the decision to resume play. I don’t think the timeliness of the report is a factor here.

Hi @zzzzz9200 , I agree that i Should have been more persistent. I am still gathering witnesses so I haven't appealed yet but will do so in the near future. The TD did not allot any time to appeal as he was only a club TD level which is another point I am bringing up in my appeal. As mentioned by almost everyone in this forum, the opponent should have flagged or flagged which should have resulted in a loss. Hope I win 🤞Will let you all know the result when official.

BlueCrazyKiwi & Chessmaster, the TD should have given about 30 minutes time for Blue to appeal. Hopefully, since the TD was unknowledgeable the old and true facts will win the appeal.

EDITED after rereading the OP.

Note that when the facts are in dispute (whether or not the player said he was ready when the clock was restarted and whether or not the queen really was touched first) AND the TD does not feel confident enough to determine what actually happened, then a ruling should be made that allows the game to continue. Anything that happened after that would be based on the TD not being sure what actually happened. Over the decades I've seen a lot of situations with two players honestly thinking two mutually exclusive things happened.

A club-level chief TD spending 15 minutes making the ruling means the TD probably tried to make the best ruling possible and either did not know about special referees or there were no other TDs among the players that could form an appeals committee. A club-level TD may not have known the difference between improper and illegal and even national-level TDs at national events have made that mistake in the past (once disallowing a draw offer made on the opponent's time that the opponent wanted to accept - though the game finally did end in a draw so that worked out).

It sounds like the club-level TDs were dealing with an edge case and they simply did not yet have the experience to realize all of the ramifications or how it might best be handled. Under those circumstances it seems like they (perhaps accidentally) did as well as many higher-certified TDs would have done when being uncertain about the touch move/restart claim, with their primary potential error being the two-minute add that the non-rook-mover received, and even then that add could still be legitimately done by even higher-certified TDs as an imposition of a standard penalty for an unintentional failure to properly follow the rules.

The rook-mover may have truly thought they made an illegal move, the opponent seemed to think it possible, and the TDs were caught up by that agreement. Giving the one second back is an understandable (and possibly even appropriate) decision by many club-level TDs and a number of higher-level ones.

Only a TD who thought the rook-mover was trying to intentionally manipulate the situation (falsely saying the queen was first touched or falsely denying that an agreed continuation was done) might have ruled the game continue with the touch move claim and the rook still needing to be moved back before moving the queen (thus resulting in the flagging)). Normally touch move claims are handled by first restoring the position and then requiring the touch move to be played. A player capable of such intentional manipulation would also realize that the same result would come by simply completing starting the opponent's clock to complete the rook move and then finally(?) realizing there was a touch move violation - though if the rook move was an otherwise legal blunder (sounds like it in this case) the opponent might simply accept it and continue (FIDE rules and USCF rules allow handling that situation differently if there really was a touch move violation, with both accepting the rook-move without a reasonably verifiable touch move violation).

Most cases appealed to the office sound quite strong when only the initial side is presented. About half the time the response undermines or eliminates the initial strength of the case. A $50 good faith filing fee is required and that fee is returned if the appeal is considered to be a reasonable one (automatically reasonable if ruled in favor of the appellant and maybe half the time still considered reasonable even when the appeal is denied).

Final take-aways: appealing the office is based on the agreed restart and questionable claim of an initial queen touch; TDs are human with no super-knowledge automatically received by becoming certified; the less-experienced TDs truly tried their best when making the ruling; many (most?) higher level TDs would have handled it the same; and the desired ruling would have only been made by stronger TDs if it could be pretty much proven that the rook-mover was making a deliberate and very knowledgeable attempt to manipulate the rules to advantage; even lower-level TDs still diligently try their utmost to make the best ruling when they are unsure what that best ruling might actually be.

BlueCrazyKiwi, You might want to send in an appeal without the good faith fee to start with just in case they tell you that you should have appealed within 30 minutes in writing. Then, they can tell you that you need to send in a good faith deposit because they will still count your appeal or they won't even hear it.

Ok thank you!