An Arbiter's Notebook
by Geurt Gijssen

More Events in Elista

In my previous Notebook I promised to tell more about the
Olympiad in Elista. I have already mentioned something about the
time limit and the use of the DGT clocks. In each round 328 games
were played. This meant that we had to program 328 clocks every
day. We played according to the Fischer modus, 40 moves in 100
minutes, and then 20 moves in 50 minutes and 10 minutes for the
remaining moves, with an addition of 30 seconds after each move. 

It would often happen that after about 6 hours playing time an
arbiter, a captain or a player would come to me and inform me that
the above mentioned 10 minutes for the third time control had not
been added. This was easy to correct, but I was very unhappy that
some of the arbiters made mistakes when programming the clock.
And several times I even blamed them for this. 

But, in round 5 the captain of the Portuguese team came to me and
informed, that he had discovered several years ago that the DGT
clock had a bug. I looked into this with some people from the DGT
Company who were present in Elista. They had to admit that he
was completely right. I hope that arbiters will read the following
paragraph very carefully, an official statement issued by DGT, on
how to avoid this bug.

"We had report of a bug in the setting of the Fischer Tournament
methods. It appears only in option 25 "Fischer" tournament Manual
set, (Option 22 for DGT+) and only when the manual setting is
skipped by pressing the Start/Stop button.

The following happens: When in option 25 ("Fischer" Tournament
up to 4 periods) (option 22 for DGT+) the manual entry of the
settings is skipped by pressing the Start/Stop button at the first
flashing digit, the setting of the third and fourth period gets lost and
is set to zero. Solution: When the above option is used with more
than 2 periods, always step through all parameters by pressing OK
for every figure."

There were a few strange incidents. A few times a player stopped
his own clock and started his opponents's clock, without making a
move. There was one case when a member of the Brazilian
women's team did this, because her opponent did not write down
the moves. She wanted to force her opponent to write the moves on
her own time. Her opponent did this, but then the problem arose
that the clock had counted one move more than they actually had
played. I do not remember how many times I told the players that
in case of an incident to stop the clocks and to summon the arbiter.
Especially with the Fischer control, it is a must.

I would like to tell you about the meetings of the Rules
Committee...

The first meeting of the Rules Committee started with a moment of
silence in the memory of Carlos Falcon, who passed away. Carlos
was a member of the Rules Committee and had acted as an arbiter
and organiser of chess tournaments. He was my Deputy Arbiter in
the Kasparov- Karpov Match, New York and Lyon 1990. I also
worked with him in the World Cup Tournament, Barcelona 1989,
which he organised. He was a very precise man, with a good eye
for details and always very quiet. His tournament reports were
masterpieces. In the last letter I received from him, he discussed
some changes. Really I felt very sad, when Grandmaster Ljubojevic
called me and informed me that Carlos had passed away.

The Dutch Chess Federation had submitted a question about
capturing the king in blitz chess. Readers of The Chess Cafe will
recall that I had already discussed in a previous Arbiter's Notebook
what to do when the king is captured. The committee had a lengthy
discussion about the matter and whether this should be considered
to be an illegal move or not. There were different opinions in the
Rules Committee and also different interpretations of this rule. The
final conclusion was not to take any decision and not to change the
rules or the wording of the rules before the year 2000. 

Since there are no ratings for Blitz games so far, these decisions
will still remain in the hands of the arbiter of each tournament,
provided it is announced in advance what the rule in this specific
tournament will be. The blitz rules, as published by FIDE, may be
used as a guideline.

In my September column I answered a question of Mr. Damien
Andre from Belgium. He explained that he had some problems
with the symbol "=" to indicate an offer of a draw, because in his
analyses he likes to use the same symbol when the position is
equal. I discussed this in the Rules Committee and the Committee
decided to stay with the symbol, as it is easy to use some other
symbol in the analyses. In the meantime I have spoken with the
editor of "Chess Informant" about this and he promised to think
about it.

Readers may remember the case of GM Epishin concerning the
rating of a game when a ruling was made pursuant to USCF rules
that conflicted with the FIDE Laws of Chess. The committee stated
that this is not an issue for the Rules Committee, but for the
Qualification Commission. I spoke with the Chairman of this
Commission, who told me that it was impossible to rule on this in
Elista, because he had not received all the details.

There had been an incident in the World Team Championship in
Lucerne 1997 where a claim was made for a draw in a position that
was not absolutely clear (King + Rook against King + Bishop). The
Chief Arbiter of this event, Mr. Horst Metzing of Germany, had
asked to have a list of positions that could be considered to be
draws. The Rules Committee rejected the idea of creating such a
list. How this and similar incidents have been solved could be
published and circulated by FIDE in its Forum letters.

I would like to make an observation. Even when we have a lot of
these cases, no compilation can be considered as the definitive list
of drawn positions. Some arbiters will allow the claim, some will
postpone the decision. The latter group likes to see what is going
on the chessboard and based on this observation, make a decision. I
repeat my advice: The arbiter should in 99% of the cases postpone
the decision. And as you know, even after a flag falls he may still
declare the game drawn.

A player has the right to claim a draw during the last phase of a
game when all remaining moves must be done in a limited time.
But he may only claim, when he has less than 2 minutes on his
clock. There was a proposal that a player may claim a draw even
before there are less than 2 minutes left on his clock for the
remaining moves, provided that he is then considered to have less
than two minutes on the clock thereafter. The committee did not
approve this proposal.

The same result happened with another proposal: The question
whether a player whose opponent has made an illegal move should
be penalized for not noticing the illegal move was not approved.

A proposal of IA Keles of Turkey was very interesting. It is an
addition to the Rules of Blitz games. If a player has less than one
minute left on his clock, he may claim a draw before his flag falls.
He shall stop the clocks and summon the arbiter. If the arbiter is
satisfied that it his opponent cannot to win by normal means, then
he shall declare the game drawn. Otherwise the claimant loses the
game. In the year 2000 the Rules Committee shall discuss this
proposal.

After the Olympiad I was, of course, quite curious, what journalists
would write about the Olympiad. Let me start by admitting that at
the beginning of the Olympiad the situation for journalists was far
from ideal. But after a few rounds they could reasonably do their
job. The Chess Palace had a satisfactory pressroom and I
understood that it was possible to transmit articles to the
newspapers from here. 

After a long discussion with the organizers the main concerns of
the journalists were addressed. Generally the journalists who were
present in Elista wrote positively about the Olympiad, the
organisers and the inhabitants of Kalmykia. I have spoken with
many players after the Olympiad as well, and with only one
exception, everyone was positive. 

In my opinion it is quite remarkable that journalists, who were not
present, but followed the Olympiad at home on the Internet - and I
have the impression, that more and more chess journalists are doing
their job in this way - were quite negative about the Olympiad. The
fact that journalists are following chess tournament via the Internet
and not in person in the tournament hall is a cause for concern. I
have already noticed more than once that incidents in the playing
hall have not been properly reported in the newspapers...