Is rotating a pawn so that it faces a different direction and then moves in that direction technically permitted according to the 2018 FIDE Laws?

Question

While browsing the Chess and Puzzling Stack Exchange sites, I've come across several instances where people have found loopholes in the rules of chess, causing these loopholes to be patched out eventually. In fact, while reading through the current (since Jan 1, 2018) FIDE Laws of Chess, I noticed the following paragraphs:

3.7.1 The pawn may move forward to the square immediately in front of it on the same file, provided that this square is unoccupied, or

3.7.2 on its first move the pawn may move as in 3.7.1 or alternatively it may advance two squares along the same file, provided that both squares are unoccupied, or

3.7.3 the pawn may move to a square occupied by an opponent’s piece diagonally in front of it on an adjacent file, capturing that piece.

Now I'm curious about the wording of these paragraphs, especially the phrase "in front of it". This "front" direction is not defined or mentioned anywhere in the Laws. Its usual meaning is "towards the rank furthest away from the pawn's initial location", but what if it weren't?

Suppose "front" is taken to mean the facing of the physical pawn (imagine figurine pieces with a clearly identifiable "front"). In that case, if a pawn is placed facing a different direction than usual, White could move a pawn to a lower rank or capture on a lower rank. Moving along the same rank is forbidden by the wording of 3.7.2.

Here are two examples I'm thinking of:

1. e4(facing e3) e5 2. e4e3

1. e4 d5 2.e5(facing d5) d4 3. e5xd4

In this case, it could even be technically permitted to rotate a pawn (changing what is "in front of it") using "j'adoube" before moving it.

Alternatively, the "front" direction could be defined as the direction the player is facing. However, in this case, Article 2 insufficiently defines how the chessboard is to be placed:

2.1 The chessboard is composed of an 8 x 8 grid of 64 equal squares alternately light (the ‘white’ squares) and dark (the ‘black’ squares).

The chessboard is placed between the players in such a way that the near corner square to the right of the player is white.

[...]

2.3 The initial position of the pieces on the chessboard is as follows: [depiction of standard positions]

It is not mentioned which pieces start closer to which player, so according to this interpretation, it is technically not illegal to start with the white pieces on the side of the board closer to Black. "Front" would then mean that pawns could only move one step (assuming you get the pieces out of the way), but not promote afterward (since the promotion rank is defined in paragraph 3.7.5.1 as "the rank furthest from its starting position"). Alternatively, a player could rotate the chessboard by 180° before moving.

I'm aware that all this is nitpicking the rules, of course, that's not the intended way to play chess, I get that. So here's the question I'm actually interested in: Suppose that during a FIDE tournament, some player makes a move that is legal only by one of the above interpretations of the rules. How would this situation be resolved properly, considering Articles 11 and 12 of the Laws?

Answer 1

This sort of thing is what the Preface of the Laws of Chess is for:

PREFACE

The Laws of Chess cannot cover all possible situations that may arise during a game, nor can they regulate all administrative questions. Where cases are not precisely regulated by an Article of the Laws, it should be possible to reach a correct decision by studying analogous situations which are discussed in the Laws. The Laws assume that arbiters have the necessary competence, sound judgement and absolute objectivity. Too detailed a rule might deprive the arbiter of his freedom of judgement and thus prevent him from finding the solution to a problem dictated by fairness, logic and special factors.

FIDE appeals to all chess players and federations to accept this view.

No, the laws don't define what the square in front of a pawn is. But arbiters have freedom of judgement to deal with that kind of omission from the rules.

And there is no way an arbiter will let you move a pawn in an illegal way during a FIDE tournament based on this argument.

It will just be treated as an illegal move (some bonus time for the opponent, have to make a legal move with the pawn if possible, and if it happens a second time the game is lost).

Answer 2

There is no loophole. Rules 3.7.1 to 3.7.4 allow pawns to move forwards along the same file, or diagonally forwards onto an adjacent file.

The only argument here seems to be that "forwards" is not explicitly defined but it is implicitly defined by 3.7.5.1 which beings with the following quote: "When a player, having the move, plays a pawn to the rank furthest from its starting position".

As the pawn can only move forwards and we know that a pawn can reach the rank furthest from its start position, then forwards must mean "towards the rank on which his opponent's king was set up".

The diagram accompanying 3.7.3 also make it clear which direction forwards is:

3.7.1 The pawn may move forward to the square immediately in front of it on the same file, provided that this square is unoccupied, or
3.7.2 on its first move the pawn may move as in 3.7.1 or alternatively it may advance two squares along the same file, provided that both squares are unoccupied, or
3.7.3 the pawn may move to a square occupied by an opponent’s piece diagonally in front of it on an adjacent file, capturing that piece.

_{Source: https://old.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=208&view=article}

Even if for some bizarre reason you were to setup the board with the white pieces next to the black player and vice versa, there is no ambiguity as to which direction "front" is. For a white pawn, forwards is always towards the rank where the black king was set up.

There are also no rules allowing for any sort of rotation of a piece, so even if you had say the viking style chess pieces where the pawn model itself has a face, the direction in which the pawn model faces has no meaning in the rules.

Answer 3

This is a good question, as much as some may be instinctively frustrated by it, because finding room for improvement in rulesets is useful and can prevent future issues where arbitration is required.

My understanding is that "front" is defined by the piece's colour, not it's rotational orientation. This is consistent with the definition of "last rank" in the case of queening a pawn.

However, I'm not familiar enough with the FIDE ruleset to know where (if anywhere) this is mentioned.

Answer 4

No matter how a chess piece is shaped, FIDE rules do not define "front" or any other direction relative to the orientation of the piece.

Chess pieces do not have a front, rear, direction of advance, and so forth. Only the board has these.

Answer 5

The official PDF of the FIDE Laws of Chess includes illustrations of the legal moves for each piece. These clearly show the white pawn moving "up" the file (including the two-square move from the starting rank), and the black pawn moving "down" (only one square, because it's shown away from the starting rank).

Moving the pawn along a rank is explicitly ruled out by the text, which mentions movement only along the file except for captures, which always occur in the adjacent files on the next rank. The definition of "rank" and "file" is given in Article 2.4.

The direction of "forward" from the starting rank is unambiguous, since no fewer than three movement rules involving the pawn only make sense for one along-file direction for each player. These are 3.7.b (double move permitted from the starting rank; this would land off-board if reversed), 3.7.d (the en-passant rule, which requires pawns of opposite colour to approach each other on adjacent files), and 3.7.e (promotion upon reaching the furthest rank from the starting rank, which would be impossible if only allowed to move away from it).

The very concept of a "forward direction" being mentioned in the movement rules, but no provision being made in those rules for rotating or reversing that direction, indicates clearly that the direction implied by the above paragraph is invariant for all subsequent pawn moves as well. That which is not explicitly permitted is implied to be forbidden.

Furthermore, FIDE tournaments are normally conducted with standard Staunton-style pieces, in which the pawn is rotationally symmetric and has no apparent "front". Indeed only the knights and bishops lack this property, but unlike the pawn they have rotationally symmetric movement patterns. The rules do not explicitly mention Staunton pieces except in the context of visually impaired players (who must identify pieces by touch), but providing an exotic form of chess pieces for a tournament game would be highly irregular, and could legitimately be considered unfair in itself.

I do agree that an explicit definition of "forward" would make a precise interpretation easier to arrive at purely from the text. This could be "along the file, towards the rank furthest from the player". This is unambiguous even for Black, since Article 2.1 places the board between the players and specifies its orientation (though even this could be improved, since it doesn't specify that the players must sit on the side of the board at which their pieces start).

Answer 6

The "on the same file" language already takes care of this. 2.4 The eight vertical columns of squares are called ‘files’

Moving based on some notional "facing'" of the pawn would take the pawn off the file.

Answer 7

Sorry I am late to this party.

The question is about how FIDE resolves this issue. I can only answer about chess problems.

Although the text says that they only apply to over-the-board chess, I know from discussions with a FIDE rules writer that they have been concerned about their responsibilities as owners of a document which problemists will take seriously, maybe even more literally than players.

For over-the-board chess there are arbiters to help interpret the language, but what about the poor lost lambs who are fairy chess enthusiasts who want to know what happens if you change the rules. E.g. if a pawn ends up on a1 somehow, how can it move?

It is always possible to read text in multiple ways. Some are just silly e.g. suppose the players are bridge players. Or suppose the pieces melt in the middle of a game and occupy multiple squares. Some of these silly ideas can form the basis of so-called joke problems. See “Outrageous Chess Problems” by Bert Hochberg for many of these.

A couple more points about your idea.

• If pawns can be rotated then we can’t assume in a problem that a pawn in second rank can necessarily make double move. It might already have moved and after rotation come back to the second rank again.

• If a pawn has been rotated some angle which is not a multiple of 90 degrees, it won’t be able to move at all. Maybe this is what a dummy pawn is?

Answer 8

Front is meant to be the next square that the pawn could normally advance to unless it were making a diagonal capture. Pawns and pieces per se have no front or back. Maybe FIDE should define it that way for people who want to be lawyers and pick at the rules.

Answer 9

There's another loophole with 3.7.3 and it happens when you turn the pawn's front to the left or to the right. You can then capture opponent's piece at the diagonal at the previous rank. Since it's at the adjacent file, the move is a "bona fide!" chess move. ex: white pawn at e4 turning to left and capturing Knight at d3. These loopholes can be removed by introducing an amendment 3.7.xx like "pawns can not move to a lower rank with the exception of 'en-passant' law, where they're technically moved by the opponent one rank below and captured, if the opponent prefers at the immediate move after the two square move of the pawn."