Sunday 1 September 2019

Surprising little rules

I'm off to run an Arbiters Seminar in the Solomon Islands this week, and have been going through old exam papers and lectures notes. While double checking the recent changes to the Laws of Chess, I was reminded of an old, but possibly overlooked rule. In the case of a capture, your move has not been 'made' until you release the captured piece from your hand. As a result, pressing your clock with a captured piece is actually illegal.

(** Update: As has been pointed out in the comments section my reading skills need some work, in that I read 'capturing' as 'captured'. So please ignore everything in this post)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think you need to read article 4.7.1 where it clearly states that the captured piece only needs to be removed from the board.
It is the releasing of the capturing piece that completes the move. No mention is made of releasing the captured piece.

4.7 When, as a legal move or part of a legal move, a piece has been released on a square, it cannot be moved to another square on this move. The move is considered to have been made in the case of:
4.7.1 a capture, when the captured piece has been removed from the chessboard and the player, having placed his own piece on its new square, has released this capturing piece from his hand,