Thursday 3 October 2013

Rapidplay is the new blitz

It seems that most of the work of the FIDE Rules and Tournament Regulations Commission meeting was about removing rules, rather than fixing them. Having dispensed with Quickplay finishes on day 1, the RTRC Meeting took the axe to rapidplay rules yesterday. Specifically Rapidplay rules and Blitz rules are much more closely aligned. In games where there is not adequate supervision, illegal moves now lose, just as in Blitz. Also the clause stating 'The arbiter shall refrain from signalling a flag fall' has been removed from both Rapidplay and Blitz, meaning that arbiters can now flag players in Blitz. Objections to this change sensibly noted that results of games may now depend upon whether an arbiter is wandering past your board or not. It was also pointed out that the adoption of this rule may simply result in arbiters not going near any games during a blitz tournament, only involving themselves when requested to by a player (presumably by shouting or waving some sort of flag).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If an arbiter can signal a flag fall, then a digital clock should be allowed to as well. This is the default behaviour of DGTs when using increments. So a player uses the evidence of the clock to establish which flag fell first, the point being that the clock stops at fall of flag.

Anonymous said...

Are kibitzers able to call flagfall? What's to stop them?

OzChess.com said...

I always thought digital clocks started blinking when a player ran out of time.

Unknown said...

DGT clocks show which player overstepped time first by showing a flag.

However when both clocks have fallen, this is irrelevant in blitz as the current rules state (appendix A.4.d.2:

"To claim a win on time, the claimant must stop both clocks and notify the arbiter. For the claim to be successful, the claimant’s flag must remain up and his opponent’s flag down after the clocks have been stopped."