The Upside Down Rook

Have you ever flipped your rooks upside down to represent a queen?

Used to do it and still might in casual games if an extra queen isn't available.

Just don't try it in a FIDE tourney. An upside-down rook is still a rook.

Those crazy FIDE guys take everything so literally. I guess they have a hard time understanding abstract concepts, lol.

Btw, I wonder if there are any photos of famous people/GMs with upside-down rooks?

You can search for the video of the Canadian National Championship quick play-off game.  FIDE rules were being used.  One player had captured the opponent's queen and it was still in his hand when the opponent queened a pawn.  With the queen not available the opponent placed an upside-down rook and the arbiter ruled it was a rook and not a queen (turning a better position into a loss).

PS The player with the queen in the hand was also queening immediately after and as he placed the queen with one hand he released the opponent's queen from the other hand so that it was finally on the table and visible when the arbiter dealt with the upside-down rook about a second after the rook was placed upside-down.

Yeah, that's why chess sets have extra queens now.

Yes. Most chess sets don't have an extra queen.

6.11.2
A player may stop the chessclock only in order to seek the arbiter’s assistance, for example when promotion has taken place and the piece required is not available.

https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/E012018 

That's why if I need a queen and none is around, I put a bishop in top of a rook. That's pretty much what a queen is.

And in FIDE the only piece that actually touched the board was the Rook and that is what it is promoted to.

And in some cases when I have no spare rooks for promotion, I use two pawns sitting in a single square to represent the queen.

yeah in blitz games OTB and its super fun to do casual games with friends lol

yeah idk why that rule is made, do you just have to stop the clock and get a new queen from across the hallway like duda did against another GM in blitz? lol

By the time the arbiter was making the ruling the position was one where the standard method (with a lot of precedents) was to rule the upside down Rook as a Rook.  The arbiter did his job there and reacted as timely as possible in the extreme time pressure.

The real issue is that the Canadian Championship blitz play-off for the national title was done with a set that had no extra queens and after all other sets had been packed away.

The subsequent issue is that Black still had White's queen in his hand when White promoted.  White reached for a queen and when he couldn't find one he grabbed a rook and placed it upside down (the proper action would have been to stop the clock and ask the arbiter for a queen).  In the split second during which the arbiter immediately started moving forward, Black promoted a pawn to a queen with one hand over the board and released the queen from his other hand at the side of the board.  That made it look like White had both pieces available to choose from and opted to put the rook on the board (right-side-up or upside-down it is a rook).

Should the arbiter have made sure there were spare queens available?

Should the arbiter have noticed that a captured queen was still in a player's hand instead of being on the side of the board (Black also had had a bishop and a pawn in that same hand at various times).

Black won the ending over the board (something like K+Q+5P vs K+R+5P) and became the Canadian Champion.

If it wasn't for the video of the game, the arbiter's decision would not have been questioned, and under the circumstances the decision was still defendable (White failed to pause the clock to ask the arbiter for a queen).  The player with Black ended up getting lambasted on various forums.

Every tournament director should know that it is perfectly legitimate to stop the clock to secure a queen (or other promoted piece). There really is no excuse for a lame ruling here.

Also, I only use the Rook/Bishop monstrosity in casual club play.

The players were IMs or GMs and thus might be expected to know the rule, but I've dealt with plenty of NMs, FMs, IMs and GMs that are unclear about various rules.

Things have changed over the years and now arbiters are obligated to intervene even without being asked to do so (well, at least for tournaments with proper supervision - a much lower player/arbiter ratio than many Swiss-style events - and two arbiters for one play-off game would have been considered proper supervision and a requirement for an arbiter to intervene).

This was a case where replacing the upside-down rook with a queen would have been against the rules (technically) and would have had a very good chance of being overturned on appeal and the arbiter sanctioned unless the arbiter could make a very strong case for essentially violating the technical rules.

I've made rulings that were overwhelmingly frowned upon by the US rules but I've done so after spending some time thinking about how to best handle such situations (and have had those decisions after-the-fact endorsed by various national committees as examples of when to best use arbiter discretion).  The immediacy of the blitz game would have made it very difficult for an arbiter to (technically) go against the rules.

If either of the arbiters had seen that the White queen had been in the hand of the player of Black then a different ruling might have been made.  If extra queens had been available then the situation might not have arisen.  An extremely high level arbiter might have made a different ruling than an average arbiter.

My personal suggestion is that if you are playing a FIDE rated event and you have no spare queen and the arbiter is not available to ask, then take Eric's suggestion of using two pawns (one lying on its side on the other making a kind of an X).  At least that way an arbiter cannot require you to promote to a specific piece when you finally see him.