A complaint has been raised elsewhere on the internet concerning the flagrant conscious - yet unconscious - chicanery employed by certain unidentified (approximately) 200 graded players at an unspecified MCA constituent club.
It is a serious problem concerning competitive buzzer chess, and one that has the potential to devalue this particular form of the game if left unchecked. Players anxious to move on the buzzer - thus depriving their opponents of the right to claim the game should they fail to do so - have become habitual 'hoverers', frequently invading the vision of their opponent with their insistence on not honing their skills as chess quickdraw artistes, violating the rules and spirit of the game that implicitly compell a player to complete the movement of hand from lap, to board, to lap inside a single ring of the buzzer.
These Mantis moves of death have a tendency to hypnotise opponents, leaving them paralyzed as all their material is taken. The method, of ****ing one's elbow, hand beneath the chin or at eyeline, 3-5 seconds before moving on the buzzer, proves a much more effective distraction to an opponent than not bathing, muttering a running commentary on the game, and slamming pieces in an apparent effort to reach the center of the earth.
I am not a nutter, and I appeal for clarification on this point of law. If buzzer chess is to have any longterm future then I demand this be taken seriously.
An important point and one that needs to be addressed as a matter of some urgency with the feast of chess that is our own - highly-acclaimed - annual Buzz-Off less than a week away. Given the ridiculous absence of an official law to outlaw the practices of the Hoverers we shall have to implement our own house rule, the Aigburth Buzzer Standard, to combat the Wrongdoers, sentences ranging from disqualification (+life ban from the club) up to, and including, excommunication and/or amputation of the playing hand.
Of growing concern is that a significant number of Hoverers have taken to using the 'technique' as an aide-memoire; whether this is lest they forget which of the many brightly-coloured pieces on the board they were about to move, which way the pieces move, or where their hand is, only they would be able to tell you.
With the future of serious, competitive Buzzer Chess in real jeopardy, the time has come to act; let us be the first to stamp out the actions of this shameless handful of so-called players.
Quite so. I have, on several occasions, divined an opponent's hovering as intended as an aide-memoire. You may think that a grandiose claim of extrasensory powers, but two facts caused me to leap to that inescapable conclusion:
a) they were also looking at the board.
b) their taut pose and rapt expression evinced a determination to move on the buzzer, once again depriving me of a potential win by default should they forget to move.
Von Bardeleben is right (and handsome too). I am with him in expressing dismay at the unfathomable behaviour of human beings.
Exactly, sir, or madam. To the uninitiated, quite WHAT the connection between hovering hand and aide memoire is, might initially seem baffling; as baffling as to what exactly the culprits are using this 'technique' to remember. And the cynical or scientifically-minded may judge it an assertion which is arrested for shoplifting in the demonstrable proof department. However, the seasoned chess-player is nothing if not expert in 'getting into the opponent's mind.' And you know, as I know. We just know.
And how else could approx 200s reach that level if not by having Post-It notes hidden on their shirt cuffs, cribbing ECO in the toilets and tying knots in their handkerchiefs?
This discraceful and downright criminal activity of 'hovering' is going to keep me awake at night for weeks. With all that's going on in Libya, Afganistan and the rest of the uncivilised world, they have nothing on the practice of 'hovering' in chess. The whole fabric of the Space Time Continuum could depend on us putting a stop to it - does anyone have Dr Brown's telephone number or have a spare 1.21 gigawatts of electricity or indeed a ruck of stashed plutoneum?
I can no longer cope with such worry on this matter and must depart to cosume a dozen valium in an attempt to get some sleep...
