USCF OTB: Ok to stand behind Opponent's Chair? + Puzzle Question

Its fine to do, as long as youre respectful and quiet.

In one really stressful game I played this actually happened for a couple of minutes.

LOL, were you the first one to walk over to the other side of the board, or the second?

First. We stared at each others board for a solid 2 minutes before we went back to our sides. In the end we drew.

Yay!  Our first TD has spoken!  Thanks for the ruling, along with its proviso.  

I wonder if it all depends on the TD who's directing the tournament.  Some TD's might be like Chris, and others may not be.

On a related note, I have read reviews of books that registered a complaint that goes like this, "Chess Book ABC with Publisher XYZ has the annoying habit of printing all its diagrams from White's point of view even when it's Black's turn to move.  I will have to deduct one star from this otherwise fine book because of it.  Why can't we get books that alternate the viewpoint depending on whose move it is?  Is that too hard to ask?  4 stars instead of 5!"

I'm a TD as well  

http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnmtDir.php?15701903

I have done this many times before and never got in to trouble in otb

Curious.  Do you ever feel funny or self-conscious when you walk over to your opponent's side of the table?  I've never done it before, but I'm thinking I'd feel a little weird, and hoping that the other players in the playing hall don't think I'm weird.

I asked Martin Stahl about this, and he's a tournament director, and he said: 

"Players are allowed to move around and can look at the position from any angle. As long as they are not intruding on the other player's space, then there is nothing wrong."

I usually do that for black, to see white's perspective, and do that about 2 times per game.

I asked this before, but maybe it got skipped because it was the last comment on the previous page:

Curious, HolographWars.  Do you ever feel funny or self-conscious when you walk over to your opponent's side of the table?  I've never done it before, but I'm thinking I'd feel a little weird, and hoping that the other players in the playing hall don't think I'm weird.

I like to do it because I am usually more at home with white. I don't feel funny. Chess diagrams in books always feature white side first. I want to know how my position looks from the "normal" point of view, thought I have never thought my position "drastically changes" when I move from one side to another. 

And it helps me think, "What would I do if I were white, and how can I prepare myself?"

This concept of seeing things from your opponent's point of view (especially from White's point of view as Black, for the aforementioned reason (diagrams in books)) is interesting. I had an OTB game once as White where my opponent, a 2000-rated player, fell for the following trap:

This is an extremely famous trap (Fischer - Reshevsky, New York 1958-59), and my opponent had seen it before, but it is always shown from the White side and thus a player unfamiliar with the opening (my opponent plays many different opening lines as either colour) would not necessarily spot it in an OTB game.

I didn't know that Leonardo was a chessplayer, lol.  Kinda looks like Magnus in that GIF.

What if Magnus started doing those moves while standing behind Fabio during the WC Match?  What would Maurice Ashley talk to Magnus about during the post game interview?