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I think that would be relevant if it were true. Peter McKillop was correct to point out that this claim is incorrect, since it was not the "only time" Bator kept his hand under the table, he also did so when holding a Bishop.
I think you are dead wrong on this. He had his arms crossed with the bishop. There was never any under the table placement.
OK Mathieu interesting but you are not being entirely clear. I will ask you:
If Bator said "Hey guys, yes I fucking hid the queen on purpose!!" who would be the more guilty party in this pretend scenario?
Bator for purposefully hiding the queen, or the arbiter for missing the queen's absence?
To be less deceptive about my question: Specifically are you saying its ok to cheat because its on the arbiter's shoulders to catch the cheater?
I don't understand the agressive tone of your message. I was just describing what kind of arbiter Pierre Dénommée is? Sorry if something offended you, that was not my intention. Dénommée is known for being anal about regulations. I believe he likes it if an IM puts an upside down rook on the board and he can step in, interupt the flow of the game and apply a rule that disturbs said IM.
And what I think about Bator's behaviour is irrelevant. It's hard to prove intent from a video of a blitz game where adrenaline rushes high. However, poor sportsmanship is a fair accusation, given that he didn't intervene when the arbiter said 'the queen was there'. Bator obviously knew it wasn't and didn't say a word.
-Intended or unintended poor sportsmanship by Bator (only he knows)
-Little misstep by Nikolay in extreme zeitnot
-Very poor overall performance by the arbiter
And yet, the only one being penalized here is Nikolay. Of course the result of the game should be overturned.
I think this storey most importantly highlights that the queen went missing in another Sambuev game. That the arbiter was more able to handle the incident is less relevant.
It is not clear that the second queen was even there before the game. Seeing the practice of the championship where no tables had second queens, a lot of chances that that game was played without spare queens too.
what kind of arbiter Pierre Dénommée is? Sorry if something offended you, that was not my intention. Dénommée is known for being anal about regulations.
The arbiter missed the opportunity to point that moves are done with one hand. Or maybe he told in French? LOL ( The promotion was executed with two hands...)
I think you are dead wrong on this. He had his arms crossed with the bishop. There was never any under the table placement.
What time frame are you referring to?
When Bator was holding the bishop I said his hand was "below table level," which it was for almost the entire time he was holding the bishop. You seem to be getting sidetracked by the bishop.
Last edited by Peter McKillop; Wednesday, 5th July, 2017, 10:15 PM.
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
The arbiter missed the opportunity to point that moves are done with one hand. Or maybe he told in French? LOL ( The promotion was executed with two hands...)
IIRC you can use two hands when promoting. (I may be mistaken and/or and the rule may have changed since I came to that understanding.)
There is a (16 minute) video of Bator doing a post-mortem with Michael Dougherty in 2013. You will notice that Bator is continually fiddling with captured pieces (most notably after the 4:20 mark) when he is not using that hand to move pieces. At one point, he has five pieces (both colours) which he gas in and out of his right hand.
So what do other GM's do in a blitz game? Here are Carlsen and Nakamura playing blitz this week. No captures for a while, but - sure enough - around the 8-minute mark, Carlsen starts fidgiting with a couple of captured P's before placing them to the side. Then Nakamura does the same thing. Neither ever held Queens, but Carlsen had a Rook in his hand for a couple of moves. It must be a nervous habit of all chessplayers.
I do tend to fidget with pawns during my games. Sometimes a bishop. But it would never occur to me to hide a queen, especially when a promotion is coming up. That's just common decency.
I think you and I have very different ideas about what is important in Nikolay's post about the promotion in Sambuev-Sturt.
It seems to me that you think it is important because it might show a pattern of unsporting behaviour by Sambuev.
I think it is important because it shows that Arbiters have made different decisions in very similar cases (about upside down Rook promotions).
It is amazing that here Nikolay... is pointing out that there might be a pattern or precedent.
...
I think this storey most importantly highlights that the queen went missing in another Sambuev game. That the arbiter was more able to handle the incident is less relevant.
As Egis politely suggested, there is no reason to think that "the queen went missing in another Sambuev game".
Readers who follow the link which Nikolay gave to the game Sambuev-Sturt (http://chess.ca/newsfeed/node/326)
will see that at move 53 Sturt promoted a pawn to put a second black Queen on the board.
In my experience of weekend Swiss tournaments in Canada, it is rare to find spare Queens at board, so I would assume that there was no spare Queen in the Sambuev-Sturt game. Unless you know for a fact that there was a spare Queen beside the board, you should not assert or even speculate that it might be part of a "pattern" in Sambuev's games.
Then John Upper goes on to somewhat blindly start going through the rules, trying to shift the focus to the arbiter again.
This misses the point of my post entirely. I wasn't trying to "shift the focus the arbiter again", but to point out that there are two legitimate rulings in this and similar cases.
Nikolay referred to a game at the McGill Open where the TD/Arbiter made a different decision when a pawn was promoted to an upside down Rook:
in the McGill Open the Arbiter changed the upside down Rook to a Queen
at the 2017 Canadian Championship the Arbiter insisted that it remain a Rook.
I quoted the specific rules I did, not (I hope) "somewhat blindly", but because they show that both Arbiters could correctly claim they were following the rules even though they made different decisions in similar cases. As I interpret their actions, the McGill Arbiter followed rule 12.2, and the Canadian Championship Arbiter followed rule 12.1.
That the arbiter was more able to handle the incident is less relevant.
For me, the key point is not that the Arbiter was more (or better) able to handle the incident, but that the two different ways of handling it are consistent with the FIDE rules and recent tournament practice in Canada.
As I said at both the start and end of my post, I'd personally prefer Arbiters to follow 12.2 when it conflicts with 12.1; but as I noted at the end of the post, many chess players would prefer the opposite.
FWIW, it may be best if FIDE does not specify which of these two rules dominates, since Arbiters who prefer 12.1 may well be people who would be better off not using the discretion given by 12.2.
----------------------------[re: other post]--------------------
I will recheck the video, but missing twenty seconds on the hidden queen is hardly a big deal.
It was still (minus your twenty seconds) under the table for almost three minutes. That is a key piece of information.
It may be a key piece of information, but what does it show/mean?
Does the long(ish) time Sambuev held the Queen suggest to you that he is more or less blameworthy?
If Sambuev had picked up the Queen a few seconds (or moves) before Nikolay was about to promote then I would interpret that to mean he was deliberately attempting to interfere with his opponent's play. But that's not what he did: Sambuev had the Queen in his hand from the moment he captured it, long before promotion was on the horizon.
IMHO, oddly, the longer Sambuev held the Queen, the more it seems (to me) that it was an unintentional/nervous action.
As for your argument, the minutia you extoll could be more easily summed up in that you believe Bator had no real intent. At least that's what your abbreviated statement above speaks to me. I am not so sure you are correct here. In fact without knowing Bator's thoughts, you are just guessing. I never said he had intent. But it almost does not matter here, as he has taken away the piece from reach and sight.
Do you think intent matters, or almost does not matter?
I think for most of the rules intent does not matter, only actions do. But for other rules -- e.g. penalties for bringing the game into disrepute -- intent does matter. There have been two basic streams of opinion and commentary on this incident, one of which emphasizes actions and one which emphasizes intent:
one which says that Sambuev did not break any rules and Noritsyn was correctly ruled to have promoted the pawn to a Rook,
the other which says that Sambuev intentionally did something wrong (holding the pieces, not speaking up when the Arbiter was ruling) and should be penalized for it.
The problem with intent is that we're all just making (semi)informed guesses about intent based on our observations about behaviour. This is why I have been so picky about trying to correctly determine the facts about the players's actions, and to describe them as neutrally as possible. For example:
Sambuev held a bishop below table-top level, so it is factually inaccurate to say that the only piece he held below the table was the Queen;
I use the word "holding" rather than the word "hiding", since the latter is ambiguous between intentionally and unintentionally keeping from view.
A couple of points about intent:
I don't think it's possible to reliably infer intent from behaviour, especially not when the behaviour occurs under such stressful circumstances.
Stress: with all the focus on the video, it might be worth reminding people that both players had:
played 9 rounds over 5 days,
played must-win final-round games that morning,
played four 15+10 rapid tie-break games that afternoon,
played one blitz tie-break (5+3), and
were still playing their second blitz tie-break game.
Both players are experienced professionals, but even the world's best will expect their decision-making to fail them under such stress. (Kramnik said this much about himself Leuven this week)
This is why I don't infer that Nikolay's acceptance of the Arbiter's ruling during the game was a sign that he in any way knew (consciously or unconsciously) that he had made a mistake by not stopping the clock to ask the Arbiter for a Queen (a rule I believe it was Nikolay's responsibility to know).
Last edited by John Upper; Thursday, 6th July, 2017, 01:01 PM.
Reason: undoubled a bullet point(s)
I think you and I have very different ideas about what is important in Nikolay's post about the promotion in Sambuev-Sturt.
It seems to me that you think it is important because it might show a pattern of unsporting behaviour by Sambuev.
I think it is important because it shows that Arbiters have made different decisions in very similar cases (about upside down Rook promotions).
As Egis politely suggested, there is no reason to think that "the queen went missing in another Sambuev game".
Readers who follow the link which Nikolay gave to the game Sambuev-Sturt (http://chess.ca/newsfeed/node/326)
will see that at move 53 Sturt promoted a pawn to put a second black Queen on the board.
In my experience of weekend Swiss tournaments in Canada, it is rare to find spare Queens at board, so I would assume that there was no spare Queen in the Sambuev-Sturt game. Unless you know for a fact that there was a spare Queen beside the board, you should not assert or even speculate that it might be part of a "pattern" in Sambuev's games.
This misses the point of my post entirely. I wasn't trying to "shift the focus the arbiter again", but to point out that there are two legitimate rulings in this and similar cases.
Nikolay referred to a game at the McGill Open where the TD/Arbiter made a different decision when a pawn was promoted to an upside down Rook:
in the McGill Open the Arbiter changed the upside down Rook to a Queen
at the 2017 Canadian Championship the Arbiter insisted that it remain a Rook.
I quoted the specific rules I did, not (I hope) "somewhat blindly", but because they show that both Arbiters could correctly claim they were following the rules even though they made different decisions in similar cases. As I interpret their actions, the McGill Arbiter followed rule 12.2, and the Canadian Championship Arbiter followed rule 12.1.
For me, the key point is not that the Arbiter was more (or better) able to handle the incident, but that the two different ways of handling it are consistent with the FIDE rules and recent tournament practice in Canada.
As I said at both the start and end of my post, I'd personally prefer Arbiters to follow 12.2 when it conflicts with 12.1; but as I noted at the end of the post, many chess players would prefer the opposite.
FWIW, it may be best if FIDE does not specify which of these two rules dominates, since Arbiters who prefer 12.1 may well be people who would be better off not using the discretion given by 12.2.
----------------------------[re: other post]--------------------
It may be a key piece of information, but what does it show/mean?
Does the long(ish) time Sambuev held the Queen suggest to you that he is more or less blameworthy?
If Sambuev had picked up the Queen a few seconds (or moves) before Nikolay was about to promote then I would interpret that to mean he was deliberately attempting to interfere with his opponent's play. But that's not what he did: Sambuev had the Queen in his hand from the moment he captured it, long before promotion was on the horizon.
IMHO, oddly, the longer Sambuev held the Queen, the more it seems (to me) that it was an unintentional/nervous action.
Do you think intent matters, or almost does not matter?
I think for most of the rules intent does not matter, only actions do. But for other rules -- e.g. penalties for bringing the game into disrepute -- intent does matter. There have been two basic streams of opinion and commentary on this incident, one of which emphasizes actions and one which emphasizes intent:
one which says that Sambuev did not break any rules and Noritsyn was correctly ruled to have promoted the pawn to a Rook,
the other which says that Sambuev intentionally did something wrong (holding the pieces, not speaking up when the Arbiter was ruling) and should be penalized for it.
The problem with intent is that we're all just making (semi)informed guesses about intent based on our observations about behaviour. This is why I have been so picky about trying to correctly determine the facts about the players's actions, and to describe them as neutrally as possible. For example:
Sambuev held a bishop below table-top level, so it is factually inaccurate to say that the only piece he held below the table was the Queen;
I use the word "holding" rather than the word "hiding", since the latter is ambiguous between intentionally and unintentionally keeping from view.
A couple of points about intent:
I don't think it's possible to reliably infer intent from behaviour, especially not when the behaviour occurs under such stressful circumstances.
Stress: with all the focus on the video, it might be worth reminding people that both players had:
played 9 rounds over 5 days,
played must-win final-round games that morning,
played four 15+10 rapid tie-break games that afternoon,
played one blitz tie-break (5+3), and
were still playing their second blitz tie-break game.
Both players are experienced professionals, but even the world's best will expect their decision-making to fail them under such stress. (Kramnik said this much about himself Leuven this week)
This is why I don't infer that Nikolay's acceptance of the Arbiter's ruling during the game was a sign that he in any way knew (consciously or unconsciously) that he had made a mistake by not stopping the clock to ask the Arbiter for a Queen (a rule I believe it was Nikolay's responsibility to know).
The arbiters pointed out the availability of the Queen implying they would have taken the action done in the Mcgill open had a queen not been available. The computer seems to think the position is equal if Queens are on the board. One idea is to declare the game either a draw or nullified and another game is played between the two. I still am of the opinion that knowingly or unknowingly withholding a queen clearly violates rule 12.6 of FIDE rules and the appeals committee could set an important precedent in warning players not to hang onto captured pieces, especially, unique ones like the queen.
The arbiters pointed out the availability of the Queen implying they would have taken the action done in the Mcgill open had a queen not been available. The computer seems to think the position is equal if Queens are on the board. One idea is to declare the game either a draw or nullified and another game is played between the two. I still am of the opinion that knowingly or unknowingly withholding a queen clearly violates rule 12.6 of FIDE rules and the appeals committee could set an important precedent in warning players not to hang onto captured pieces, especially, unique ones like the queen.
As I was reading this I immediately was led to recall the penalty for Wesley So for 'writing notes to himself on his score sheet' (!).
*That* seems trivial by comparison to not being able to find a Queen for promotion and yet the result for So was a loss in a very crucial game.
The arbiters pointed out the availability of the Queen implying they would have taken the action done in the Mcgill open had a queen not been available.
That might be what they had intended the players to understand. I was not there to hear preround announcements, but I interpreted Louis's post about this to mean that the Arbiters were telling the players that spare Queens were available, and where the players could find them if necessary. That makes sense to me because the announcement was before the regular games during the tournament, when it is likely there were more games than spare Queens.
The location of a table with spare Queens seems less relevant to me for the play-offs, where the spare pieces can and should have been at the board. (but there's no reason to keep repeating this, I think)
The computer seems to think the position is equal if Queens are on the board.
I agree about the eval, though with so little time remaining, unless there's a perpetual, the side with more time has the practical advantage.
It's almost funny, but even though the objective evaluation of the position is irrelevant to the issues about rule following and sportsmanship, my guess is that we wouldn't be discussing this so intently if Nikolay's position had been clearly losing after ...d1=Q.
I still am of the opinion that knowingly or unknowingly withholding a queen clearly violates rule 12.6 of FIDE rules and the appeals committee could set an important precedent in warning players not to hang onto captured pieces, especially, unique ones like the queen.
It will be interesting to see what the appeals committee says about this.
I know that at least one IA (not Canadian) has written that Nikolay's moving his captured pieces away from the board during Bator's moves could be construed as annoying and distracting behaviour. That seems harsh to me, but I can see his point.
As I was reading this I immediately was led to recall the penalty for Wesley So for 'writing notes to himself on his score sheet' (!).
*That* seems trivial by comparison to not being able to find a Queen for promotion and yet the result for So was a loss in a very crucial game.
Agree that it seems trivial. But So had been previously warned by the Arbiter for doing the same thing in a previous round. I take that as an example of a good job by the Arbiter: fair warning for a first rules violation, penalty for second violation.
I'd be worried that writing the times on my scoresheet -- which I still do -- could be construed as helpful notes (which they are) and so against FIDE Article 12.3 a:
"During play the players are forbidden to make use of any notes, sources of information or advice, or analyse on another chessboard".
Last edited by John Upper; Thursday, 6th July, 2017, 03:22 PM.
Reason: changed "Richard" to "Louis" and added link
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