Tuesday, May 8, 2012

FIDE Laws of Chess - Article 3

Article 3 saw a little bit more work, although this was mainly in the area of tightening up definitions.
Section 3.1 contains definitions of 'attack' as well as a prohibition on capturing your own pieces. There was some discussion about what defines 'attacking a square', as whether pinned pieces can capture on a square (normally they can't) or give check (in this case they do), needs to be taken into account. In the end we modified the wording slightly, without changing the assumed meaning.
There was also the regular discussion about how best to define the Knight move. It was noted that definitions seem to change from language to language, and this can sometimes cause difficulties. The familiar "moves in an L shape" definition in English may have no equivalent in Chinese or Japanese. In the end we left it as is.
Section 3.7 deals with how the pawn moves, and there was some work done here. The definition of en-passant  was tidied up to remove the use of the word 'attack' and instead to use the physical location of the respective pawns. ( 'occupying a square on the same rank and on an adjacent file').
Promotion was also covered in this section, and although we left the wording unchanged it is still something that may be revisited. The difficulty is that this section defines what promotion 'is', not how it is supposed to occur. So the definition starts with 'When a pawn reaches the rank furthest from its starting position' which is perfectly fine. But in the absence of any further laws concerning promotion, this also becomes the defined method of promotion (ie You must physically move the pawn to the 8th rank to effect promotion). This then cause difficulties (especially at Blitz) when players simply remove the pawn from the 7th and put a piece down on the 8th. We had intended to work on something to repair this, but due to circumstances beyond our control, we did not have the time to do so. Nonetheless I may still try and put something together before Istanbul.

5 comments:

Garvin said...

Article 4 please.

Shaun Press said...

It's coming. I just needed to see a copy of the minutes from the meeting, lest I suggested something that we didn't actually agree on!

Garvin said...

One item I was wondering whether it was discussed, and if so will there be any recommendations is-

Fide uses 60 moves as their basis for time controls etc, Are there any proposals to change this?

Shaun Press said...

RTRC did not look at the formula uses to calculate time controls, although we are recommending a change to the definition of Blitz to now only go up to 10 minutes per player.
Most time control issues are handled by the Qualification Commission, so any proposed changes may well start with them.

leokom said...

3.8 There are two different ways of moving the king:
by moving to an adjoining square not attacked by one or more of the opponent's pieces.

IMHO, this leaves some ambiguity for the situation: White: Kf8, Black Rh8+

Technically at the moment of the move, the 'e8' field is NOT attacked by the black rook, so if we read it as is, it might be assumed Kf8-e8 is legal.

In principle 3.9 covers this case by phrase "No piece can be moved
that will either expose the king of the same colour to check"

but it could be also nice to state this explicitly in 3.8