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BGonline.org Forums
Legal plays?? - Re:Kibitzers
Posted By: Timothy Chow In Response To: Legal plays?? - Re:Kibitzers (Robert Maier)
Date: Tuesday, 22 February 2011, at 10:02 p.m.
In an ideal world with perfect kibitzers, allowing kibitzers to point out illegal plays might be all right. But I think that in the real world, kibitzers simply introduce chaos. Not all slippery slopes are really that slippery, but this one really seems like a precipice. It's hard enough to get players to obey rules; trying to get kibitzers to understand that they're allowed to interfere in the game in one way but not another is going to be a nightmare.
It might be a mistake to give examples, since there are thousands of examples one might come up with and by giving just one, I might create the false impression that there is only one example. But here is an example. Kibitzer misreads dice and calls an illegal play as the player reaches for the clock. The comment forces the player to look more closely at the board, and then the player notices a better play, which he then makes instead.
Or another example: Kibitzers decide that since legal moves are in force, there's "no harm" in remarking that a particular play is literally forced. Then a situation arises where one could easily think that the play is forced when in fact it isn't. Kibitzer A takes it upon himself to say that the play is forced; Kibitzer B contradicts him, thereby drawing attention to a subtle play that the player would otherwise have missed.
All these cases and a thousand more could be blocked by introducing a thousand rules governing what kibitzers can and can't do. Is this really worth it? I think most would say no.
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