Tournament/ League Play

Additional Rules

  • All electrical equipment such as phones, laptops, smart watches, should be switched off or not taken into the playing room. If they are allowed in, they must usually placed within a bag or box and must not be on your person until the game has finished.

  • Usually you are not allowed to talk or make excessive noises during matches, unless you need to ask questions to the arbiter/captain (person in charge) or your opponent.

  • If you a touch one of your pieces then you have to move it if there is a legal move to be able to do so.

  • If you touch one of your opponents pieces then you must take it, assuming there is a legal way to do so.

  • Virtually all Tournament/League play is played with clocks or timers, and can be classed in the following ways

    1. Lightning - this is usually played with a buzzer on a timer. The buzzer is usually set off to go every 10 seconds, and moves must be made on the buzzer. These games are usually ungraded.

    2. Bullet - This is for games where each player gets up to 3 minutes each on the clock. These games are usually ungraded.

    3. Blitz - This is for games where each player gets more than 3 minutes, but no more than 10 minutes each on the clock.

    4. Rapid - This is for games where each player gets more than 10 minutes, but less than 60 minutes each on the clock.

    5. Standard - This is for games where each player gets 60 minutes or more on the clock.

  • Now that the game has moved on to using digital clocks, it is possible to play using Fischer timings, which allow for additional time to be added to the clock after every move. In this situation, the classification of the game is placed with how much time a single person has to make 60 moves, so a Bullet game would either be a game with 3min + 0 secs a move, or 2min + 1 sec a move, or 1 min + 2 secs a move.

  • When playing with clocks, on your move you must play your move and then press down the clock with the same hand that you moved the piece.

  • For all standard play games you must write down all your moves. Unless you are playing with an increment of 30 seconds or more a move, you can stop writing your moves down when you get down to your last 5 minutes.

  • Special cases

    1. In the case of playing blind players, they usually have a separate peg board. Touch move is when a peg is removed from the board, rather than when touching a piece, as they use the peg board to work out where all the pieces are. As they play their move on their peg board, they will speak their move so that their opponent can make the move on their own board, as well as speaking into a dictophone to record their moves instead of writing them down. They can also have special clocks that either allow the hands of the clock to be handled so they can feel how long is left on their clock, or with digital clocks it will speak and say how long is left.

    2. In the case where a player has no hands or no use of their hands, then they use the same thing they controlled the pieces to control the clock, which can include a second who is asked to move their piece and touch the clock for them, as well as writing any moves down.

Notation

Algebraic

  • This is the standard method of notation.

  • Each rank (horizontal line) is given a number, and each file (vertical line) is given a letter.

  • Therefore white pieces are place from a1-h1, and black pieces from a8-h8.

  • When writing moves down, pieces are denoted by the following letters (at least in English)

    • R -> Rook

    • N -> kNight

    • B -> Bishop

    • Q -> Queen

    • K -> King

    • P -> Pawn

      • although if a move has no letter then it is considered to have been made by a pawn.

    • O-O -> Castles King side

    • O-O-O -> Castles Queen side

    • x -> signifies a piece is being taken

    • + -> signifies check

    • ++ -> signifies checkmate

      • or #

    • e.p. - en passant

    • When a pawn reaches the end rank and is promoted it is followed by an = and the piece it has been promoted to

      • e.g. e8=Q

    • ? - signifies a bad move

    • ! - signifies a good move

    • When two pieces of the same type can move to the same square it is advised to write down the starting position of the piece as well as the end position.

Descriptive

  • This is old method of notation (standard up until the 80s and still used by some)

  • Each colour has their own 1-8 for each rank, 1 from where their pieces start.

  • Each file is denoted by the piece that starts on that file.

  • So algebraic to descriptive file mapping

    • a -> QR for Queens Rook

    • b -> QN for Queens Knight

    • c -> QB for Queens Bishop

    • d -> Q for Queen

    • e -> K for King

    • f -> KB for Kings Bishop

    • g -> KN for Kings kNight

    • h -> KR for Kings Rook

  • You will notice the pieces have the same codes as algebraic.

  • When moving a piece it usually has a - to signify move, over x which signifies a take.

Score sheets

A score sheet like the one here is used to write down the moves to each game.

In some tournaments you have to use what is known as a duplicate score sheet, which involves you writing your moves on the top sheet, and they should be duplicated on the bottom sheet. At the end of the game, you usually have to tear off the top of the two sheets and hand it in to the arbiter.

I have produced a score sheet template that can be printed on to A4 double sided along the short edge, that when cut will produce 3 score sheets you can use.

Quickest Mates written down

  1. e4 e5

  2. Bc4 Bc5

  3. Qh5 Nf6

  4. Qxf7#


  1. P-K4 P-K4

  2. B-QB4 B-QB4

  3. Q-KR5 N-KB3

  4. QxKB7++

  1. f3 e5

  2. g4 Qh4#


  1. P-KB3 P-K4

  2. P-KN4 Q-KR5++