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.

Perhaps the arbiter could have been taken outside and given a sound fwashing? After all, if he's misusing his power, someone else can do likewise.

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.

<<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.>>

It was a misunderstanding and the arbiter's ruling was against the spirit of the game and that of fair play. The player probably didn't understand that he was entitled to stop the clocks. Having had my own share of unfair arbiters' decisions, I'm aware that they can act incorrectly and even spitefully. There are superb arbiters, who take great pains to be fair, and there are some who give the others a bad name. I had particular difficulty with one arbiter because he strongly supported the old BCF and the ECF. A few of us were trying to remove the BCF. They won but it was probably close.

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.

I've actually done it in a tournament and I had no idea it was somehow illegal. If an arbiter had interfered and told me it was a rook, I would have told him, correctly, that my opponent had agreed that it would be a queen, that a game of chess is a game between the two players and it isn't the arbiter's business to interfere when there was an agreement in place, since the pieces had been packed away. However, I would never have done so without the agreement of my opponent. I think that most arbiters would have backed down, certainly up to 20 years ago, although to my knowledge, it never arose. They didn't believe it should be their business to bring the game into disrepute and if they didn't back down I would have made sure that others knew that they were putting themselves before the good of the game. That was then. This is now and it seems somehow different. 

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.

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'm glad of that. (Not) When I was competing in a lot of tournaments, up until 20 years ago, that exact scenario happened a few times. Some players stuck to the letter of the law and refused to use an upside-down rook. I remember one occasion where a box of chess sets had to be unloaded again from a van. My attitude was that if it was agreed between the players, then it was no business of the arbiters, whose job was mainly to ensure fair play. I was aware that things were changing however, but 20 years ago the change was not obvious. That's a good idea about the pawns.

Players had some power back then. For instance, I tended to get on well with the T.D.s but the T.D.s were also the tournament organisers, even with big and important tournaments, such as the Preston Congress and so on. Players from clubs would sometimes attend a congress because another player was going. Although the T.D.s would not over-rule an arbiter unless the arbiter had made a definite error (that once happened to me and the arbiter was over-ruled on a matter of claiming a draw) they might not invite an arbiter back if it was perceived they had needlessly upset players. Obviously, the organisers wanted more players to attend their congresses and they mightn't want word to get around that an arbiter had been unfair.

Those were the days before FIDE started meddling in local congresses. Then, we didn't have FIDE ratings unless we played internationally. We had BCF ratings, which were only updated once a year, so players would play an entire year on a particular grade, which made organisation of events much easier. I think it was a better system for amateurs than the FIDE one, where every game means a change in rating.