Know the rules

There was an unbelievable incident at the recent World Blitz Championship, held on 29th and 30th December 2017, which showed that top players and an International Arbiter did not know the FIDE rules of chess! I am referring to the first round game between Carlsen and Inarkiev, where the following incident occurred:

As can be seen in the video, White plays Rxb7+, which was answered by the illegal move Ne3+. Carlsen should have claimed the game immediately, in terms of Blitz rule A.4.2, but instead played Kd3. At which point Inarkiev stopped the clock, claimed that Carlsen made a move in an illegal position, and somehow got the match arbiter to give him the point!!

Soon after this, the Chief Arbiter correctly told Inarkiev that Kd3 was not an illegal move and asked him to continue the game. Black refused, knowing that he had a lost endgame after the Rooks were swapped off, so the CA gave Carlsen the point.

This decision then went on appeal, and the appeals committee ruled in White's favour. You can find an interesting interview with Takis Nikolopoulos and another interview with Malcolm Pein about the incident and the relevant rules. It is worth noting that from 1st January 2018 the FIDE laws for Blitz and Rapid have been changed so that the second illegal move loses the game, but at the time the game was played, the first illegal move in Blitz or Rapid lost the game.

The moral of the story is know the rules! You can download these from the FIDE rules website.

SA Junior Team champs

The annual SA Junior team championships took place in Cape Town at the UCT Sports Hall from 4th to 7th January 2016. KZN was well represented by teams from the Ethekwini, Ilembe and Uthungulu districts. The first 2 days were extremely uncomfortable in the playing hall, thanks to a heat wave, and thousands of litres of water were consumed by the players. Western Province (the hosts) took most of the gold medals in the A division after 7 rounds of gruelling competition, winning gold in 5 of the 7 age categories. The exceptions were the under 8 category, won by Tshwane, and the under 14 category, won by Ethekwini. Here is a link to the under 14 team results; the same page also lets you select other age group results that you may be interested in. The successful Ethekwini under 14 team was anchored by FIDE Masters Naseem Essa (left) and Cailin Chetty (right) on the top boards:

The writer was present as an arbiter for the team event. We all wore a high visibility red arbiters shirt and were kept very busy, mostly with illegal moves! I handled 63 illegal moves during the 7 rounds, as well as a variety of other incidents. In the photo, I'm listening to the Buffalo City team manager:

(photos selected from the Chess SA Facebook page)

Arbiters workshop

An arbiters workshop will be held on 19th and 20th September 2015 at Northwood High School (Durban North). The workshop instructors will be Keith Rust and Divesh Sookdeo. Saturday will be spent on training exercises and discussion of the FIDE Laws of Chess (2014), then there will be an open book exam on Sunday. Here is a more detailed training programme.

The cost for the workshop and exam will be R150, payable at registration on Saturday morning (08h30). Please bring the following to the workshop/exam:

1) Pens, pencils, ruler and Calculator

2) Exam pad/Notebook for the workshop

3) ID Book (proof of identity)

All attendees must read the AOC Arbiters Manual 2014, which is downloadable from the AOC downloads and resources page. Other course materials that will be referred to are the Chess SA rating rules and the AOC arbiter regulations.

Update 29th September: congratulations to Cheshni Jeena, Craig Atkinson, Rahul Beekrum and Sayen Naidu on becoming Candidate Provincial Arbiters. Lulama Qobo becomes a Tournament Supervisor and Ilshaad Hussain a Schools Supervisor.