I have been awarded the title of FIDE Arbiter and this is the first in an occasional series of articles on my experiences as an arbiter.

In this and any followup articles I aim to pose certain situations that can occur during a tournament and hopefully explain my thinking on how they should be resolved. Please do not take anything I say as “gospel” as different arbiters have different ways of handling situations. Some stick absolutely to the letter of a rule while others allow some latitude.

While some of the rules of chess are quite specific others allow for some interpretation and those will be the areas that I will focus on here. Forgive me for printing out in full “Preface to the Laws of chess” but I think it is important to be aware of the role of the Arbiter in competitions:

The Laws of Chess cannot cover all possible situations that may arise during a game, nor can they regulate all administrative questions. Where cases are not precisely regulated by an Article of the Laws, it should be possible to reach a correct decision by studying analogous situations which are discussed in the Laws. The Laws assume that arbiters have the necessary competence, sound judgement and absolute objectivity. Too detailed a rule might deprive the arbiter of his freedom of judgement and thus prevent him from finding the solution to a problem dictated by fairness, logic and special factors.

For example in the Women’s Championship in Kilkenny a young player touched a piece but then moved another piece. As Arbiter I could have intervened but as she was in a completely lost position and her opponent was aware of this but did not object I allowed the game to proceed uninterrupted.

Simultaneous promotion, checkmate and flag fall

Now to this article's topic: I observed a game where both players were short on time. Player 1 moved a pawn to the eight rank declaring it a queen and checkmate and before he could replace it with a Queen his clock fell. Player 2 had some time left and had mating material on board.

Question: what was the result of the game?

Let us look at the appropriate rules involved.

Article 5.1a: The game is won by the player who has checkmated his opponent’s king. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the checkmate position was a legal move.

Note: once checkmate is delivered as per above it does not matter if ones clock falls.

So was the move delivering “mate” legal?

Once again let’s looks at the appropriate rule.

Article 3.7e: When a pawn reaches the rank furthest from its starting position it must be exchanged as part of the same move on the same square for a new queen, rook, bishop or knight of the same colour. The player's choice is not restricted to pieces that have been captured previously. This exchange of a pawn for another piece is called 'promotion' and the effect of the new piece is immediate.

In the above article I think that “the effect of the new piece is immediate” is crucial in that there is “no” effect before the new piece is placed on the board. Therefore article 5.1a was not satisfied and as Player 1’s clock had fallen player 2 should be declared the winner.

As an aside, if an inaccuracy occurs I usually ask both players what the result of the game should be and if they both agree I usually, but not always go along with it. In this case however even if player 2 was inclined to accept a loss due to checkmate I would not agree and award him the game.