Touch move
A recurring feature of teaching chess to youngsters is the touch-move rule. If a player touches a piece, he must move that piece, if it’s a legal move. It’s common for a dispute to break out between to players.
“You touched that piece!”
“No I didn’t!”
“YES YOU DID!!”
“NO I DIDN”T!!
Et cetera.
When I was young, I didn’t play chess; but I do remember playing basketball with my buddies in Bill Boettinger’s driveway. I wasn’t very good, but I wanted to be! I would get confused by my opponents and travel with the ball.
“Jimmy, you traveled!
“No I didn’t!
“OH YES YOU DID!”
“DID NOT!”
“DID TOO.”
Et cetera.
Lacking a moral compass at that age, I nevertheless somehow grew up to be a decent citizen. My buddies let me know that, if we were going to play driveway basketball at all, everybody had to play by the same rules.
When touch move disputes erupt at our chess practice, I am somewhat sympathetic to a learning player who is playing a pretty careful game, is holding his own against a better player, and then makes a stupid blunder. He wants a do-over! Hence, the touch-move argument.
As the coach, I seldom see the move in question. This is the way I handle it.
“Billy!, Danny! Stop arguing! . For chess to be fun, there has to be an agreement by the two opponents to follow the rules. Now, I didn’t see what happened, but you both know what happened. Now you two go out in the hall, settle this argument, and come back in here and continue your game. If you can’t resolve it, I’ll never let you two play against each other again. And if one of you is the sort of player who keeps lying about this, after a while you’ll have nobody to play. You’ll have argued yourself right off the team!
It’s been pretty effective.
Some years ago the Principal at St. Francis of Assisi School wanted to start a chess program and asked me to be their coach. Because I was already fully committed to St. Peter’s I said no, but did agree to teach a chess class in their Summer Enrichment program. About a dozen kids showed up for chess. I learned their first names and proceeded. After several sessions I noticed that two girls, Marissa,* a sixth grader, and Ashley*, a fifth grader, were always together, like two peas in a pod.
On day Marissa and Ashley were involved in a game. A touch-move dispute erupted. I intervened with my standard response, ending up
“ … and you two best friends will never be able to play each other again!”
Marissa interrupted, “She’s not my friend. She’s my SISTER!”
Stunned, I muttered, “…. oh.”
* The stories are all real, but we use pseudonyms to protect the students' online privacy.