Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Penalty Move

Below is a summary of what the FIDE Laws of Chess state into the section “The act of moving the pieces”:
(Article 4.3): “..if the player having the move touches on the chessboard, with the intention of moving or capturing:

    • one or more of his own pieces, he must move the first piece touched that can be moved
    • one or more of his opponent’s pieces, he must capture the first piece touched that can be captured…”

(Article 4.5): “If none of the pieces touched in accordance with Article 4.3 can be moved or captured, the player may make any legal move.”

This is the summary obtained from the Laws of Chess approved by FIDE on January 1st, 2018. It is a recent version but the rules not always were the same and sanctions in the past were even more rigorous.
Judge for yourself in today’s game which describes what happened in 1893 when playing an illegal move.

This game is probably incomplete. Although 3…Qe4 is the move that checkmates, there is no certainty that Black actually played it because there aren’t additional moves recorded.

Even the tournament book and other contemporary records don’t clarify this point. They claim that Black let White wriggle for a while, indicating either a pause before playing 3…Qe4# or preference for a slower win.

In any case, former penalties for illegal moves were very strict in the past, don’t you think so?

To find extra information about this game go here and scroll down to #5381.

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