Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Illegal Castle
Everyone expects that players know the rules of chess when participating in official competitions.
When beginners start playing chess, they learn how to move pieces. Along that process, they learn a special move: castle.
Castle is a special move involving simultaneously two pieces: king and rook.
FIDE rule 3.8.2 specifies that: “Castle is a move of the king and either rook of the same colour along the player’s first rank. It counts as a single move of the king and executed as follows: the king is transferred from its original square two squares towards the rook on its original square. Then that rook is transferred to the square the king has just crossed.”
The player can lose the right of castling if he/she previously moved the king or the rook on the side where castle is intended to play. FIDE rule 3.8.2.1 specifies when the right of castling is lost: “A player loses the right to castle: a) if the king has already moved, or b) with a rook that has already moved”
The right of castling can also be temporarily prevented in the following conditions specified by FIDE rule 3.8.2.2: “Castling is temporarily prevented: a) if the square on which the king stands, or the square which it must cross, or the square which it is to occupy, is attacked by one or more of the opponent’s pieces, or b) if there is any piece between the king and the rook with which castling is to be effected.”
Everyone expect that titled players be familiar with those rules. However, this not always is the case. And today’s game is an example. In the European Women Individual Championship held in 2019 in Antalya, Turkey, an unusual case occurred. Two IMs played in board 27 in round 3. With the white pieces Maria Gevorgyan from Armenia. With the black pieces Daulyte-Cornette Deimante, from Lithuania. The game started as a Sicilian Defense and proceeded according to chess rules until move 23. In the following diagram you can follow those moves.
At this particular moment, Daulyte is threatening checkmate with Qxd2. Maria could have avoided it with 24.Rd1, 24.Bc1 or 24.d4. Unfortunately, all of them are bad. Instead, Maria played castle, which is the least bad move. However, castle is an illegal move in that particular position. And the reason is that Maria had previously played 14.Rb1 and later 16.Ra1.
Amazingly, neither the players nor the arbiters noted the mistake and the game proceeded for more the 80 moves.
In the diagram below you can follow the game until move 80. They are the moves I could find from that game.
It’s worth noting that if Maria’s opponent or the arbiters had noticed that 24.0-0-0 was an illegal move, Daulyte would have won the game. The reason is the “touch to move” rule. Because Maria had touched the king when playing castle, she would have to play her king and it was checkmate in one move!
Scoresheet of the game
The most intriguing thing is that even after 24.0-0-0 Daulyte maintains a clear advantage. However, Maria fought hard in a complicated endgame and went on to win the game.
Maria Gevorgyan, the player involved in the game, explains this strange case:
“We played for around 5.5 hours and were the last ones playing in the tournament. I won the game and returned to my room. My friend came to dinner and I asked to quickly save the game in ChessBase before we went. When I got to the moment of the long castle, ChessBase whistles. I try again… it whistles again and doesn’t allow me to play the move! And after a third time, it whistles again… I turned to my friend and started laughing very hard as I understood what happened. Earlier in the game, I played Ra1-b1, then played back Rb1-a1, and then castled, so my castle was illegal. I texted my opponent apologizing as I didn’t do it intentionally….
On the way to the dinner, people started approaching me, asking what had happened. I was out of social media at that time, so I didn’t see what was happening there, but apparently, people already saw it! There were videos where some were saying, ‘When you just learn how to play chess and don’t know the castling rules,’ “.
In that tournament, Maria received her third WGM norm and got the WGM title.
You can find more information about Maria Gevorgyan following THIS LINK
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