Are there moves in chess that are considered unsporting?

Question

In many sports, you often find legal tactics that are considered unsporting by fans, spectators and/or opponents. For example, in football (soccer), it is often considered unsporting to simply pass the ball around your back defenders instead of trying to attack. Are there any similar situations in chess?

Some examples that I can think of: perhaps it is considered unsporting, or perhaps indicative of lack of skill, to promote 5 pawns and crush your opponent instead of looking for a more elegant mate in a winning position. Also, in my school days, we used to think of scholar's mate as a bit ... unsatisfying. There even used to be a meme going around that scholar's mate is not allowed (probably started by the coach to get the kids to play "proper" chess).

To be clear, I'm not so much looking for unsporting behaviour as unsporting moves. I can imagine it being very unsporting to, for example, let your clock run out when you still have 40 minutes left rather than resigning in a lost position, forcing your opponent to hang around just in case you actually make a move.

Are there any other examples you can think of? Or is chess a case of - if it's legal, then it's good?

Update: Just as I was starting to think that unsporting moves are few and far between, Kamsky and Gareev played to a controversial draw by three-fold repetition in round 1 of the US champs. According to the GM's doing the analysis, Kamsky was pretty much forced into the draw, but Gareev had the opportunity to play an alternative move to continue with the game.

So let's say you have the following situation: player A plays against a much stronger opponent B. By luck or miracle, player A finds himself ahead in the game, and see the opportunity to force a draw (or maybe he is so far ahead that he knows player B would accept a draw if offered). Is it unsporting for him to draw the game then?

Answer 1

What is "unsporting"? To my mind (backed up by the two or three definitions I quickly browsed), it's mostly about behaviour. To act sportingly is to be fair and respectful, to play for the (mutual) enjoyment of the sport, and—here's the tricky part—to not abuse the rules for an unfair advantage.

Unsporting behaviour in general, and the last kind in particular, often leads to new rules being introduced. ("No underarm bowling in one-day cricket" is the first example that comes to mind.)

I can't think of anything on the board (as opposed to players' behaviour, or abusing the clock) that would strike me as unsporting. And the lack of new rules to counter anything on the board would seem to support that view.

So essentially, no: in standard chess, "if it's legal, then it's good". People might complain about how some style of play (whatever's new and trendy and effective) is changing the spirit of the game or whatever, but so far everything still seems to be fair play.

Answer 2

Possible unsporting situations I'm thinking about:

• When playing bullet games online (1 to 3 minutes per side), you move a single piece many times like 1. Nf3 ... 2. Ng1 ... 3. Nf3 ... 4. Ng1 etc. (to gain some time against your opponent)
• When you wait to lose by time instead of resigning (to avoid your opponent to play another game and to force him to keep thinking for nothing)
• When you wait the last minute you have on clock to force mate and win (to apply a psychological pressure to your opponent)
• When playing bullet games online, you promote all your pawns to queens to force mate with a big advantage (to apply a psychological pressure to your opponent)
• When playing games online, you try to distract your opponent by being chatty for example (to force him to make a bad move)
• When you ask for draw many times during a game whereas you are most probably going to lose (to distract your opponent and thus try to force him to make a bad move)

All these situations are legal in chess but can be considered as unsporting approaches.

Answer 3

Two situations I have seen in FIDE-rated tournaments:

• Both players making nonsense moves (mostly king moves) throughout the game. At around move 20, the arbiter stepped in and gave it a 0:0 score. [I guess they were going to agree to a draw at some point.] In this case, the arbiter didn't agree to the idea "if it's legal, then it's good".

• Two juniors continued playing after reaching a K+R vs. K+R endgame, neither agreeing to a draw, nor claiming a draw by 50 move repetition [when it became possible]. They played on for hours in this situation delaying the next round of the tournament. (NB. In their defense, both had been instructed by their coaches not to offer nor accept draws under any circumstances.)

  (Actually, a similar situation happened to me online once: my opponent kept playing a K+R vs. K+R endgame, and I was so disinterested my rook got skewered and they won the game. I felt that was rather unsporting, but I have to recognize that it actually worked.)

Answer 4

I do think that the intention (and thus behavior) behind a move is what could make a move unsporting. Even in the example of football (soccer), the intention behind passing the ball to the defender makes the pass sporting or unsporting. Merely passing the ball is not unsporting.

Also, the example you mentioned is very conspicuous, meaning that we can conclude without a reasonable doubt that the passing of the ball to the defender is intended for wasting time (for example) and thus unsporting.

For a chess move to be judged to be unsporting, we need to be reasonably sure about the intent behind the move. Thus, blunders are not unsporting moves. They're just blunders.

Having established that, This is one example of an unsporting move(s) (conditions explained below).

    [FEN ""]

    1. d3 c5 2. Kd2? d5 3. Ke3? Nf6 4. Kf3?

If a strong player (ELO 2200+) in his/her right mind makes such an opening in a classical or rapid game, then we can reasonably conclude that he/she is deliberately trying to insult his/her opponent, essentially saying with these moves - "You're so bad that I can beat you even after making such rubbish opening moves". Or we could conclude (although less likely) that the player is not interested in playing the game and thus acting unprofessionally and thus unsportingly.

Here, it's not simply the case that we know that these opening moves are objectively bad, but we also know that the player who is making these moves also knows that they are objectively bad. So this is unlike the king moves of Steinitz, who made them thinking they are objectively good.

Answer 5

As a strong club player myself, when my opponent makes a brilliant combination, I sometimes give him/her (and the audience) the chance to observe checkmate for the beauty of the game. So, making useless moves isn't always unsportsmanlike.

Answer 6

1. "Torturing" your opponent by promoting all your pawns to rooks/bishops/knights and mate your opponent with that.

2. Keep offering him a draw when you're in a losing position to annoy your opponent.

3. Scramble the chess piece when he/she goes to the toilet.

Answer 7

All moves are fair, there's nothing unsporting that has been discovered so far.

There are only two situations that really fit well:

• Taking a long time to move, when only 1 move is possible.
• Not resigning once the game is lost. (E.g. forcing your opponent to go through the mechanics of a forced mate e.g. King+Queen vs King, is pretty disrespectful).

Perhaps one might consider playing for a draw from the outset to be unsporting, e.g. if you're ahead in a tournament, but being predictable is a weakness, so if you think somebody is playing for a draw, you need to find a way of possibly using this to your advantage.

Answer 8

It is unsporting to make moves with the intention of losing.

Answer 9

Let me mention timed online games where the opponent seems to disappear, then makes a move with a few seconds left in the hope you are no longer watching the board and will, yourself, forfeit.

Answer 10

For example, in football (soccer), it is often considered unsporting to simply pass the ball around your back defenders instead of trying to attack. Are there any similar situations in chess?

I think similar situation to passing the ball around in your half is very passive play with white, I think KIA (King's Indian Attack) is one example. It is, of course, debatable whether this is bad sportsmanship, but there are plenty of people who will call this style "lame".

[fen ""]

 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.g3 d5 3.d3 c6 4.Bg2 Bf5 5.O-O

Answer 11

Imho unsporting, but legal, behaviour on the board is mostly done by not resigning:

• If you play until mate in a position where mate is not immediately imminent, but you are completely lost.

• If you let your time run out instead of resigning, effectively forcing your opponent to wait unnecessarily.

This is from the point of view of a tournament player. Casual players might have a different approach, especially to point one. The mentioned "torturing your opponent by promoting all your pawns before checkmating" is really only possible if your opponent should have resigned already. (And might be an adequate way to show him that he cannot touch you with his unsporting behaviour, that in fact you enjoy playing on in a completely winning position.)

Answer 12

The touch-move rule depends on the intention of the player. It is unsporting to misrepresent one's intention after changing one's mind and changing their move.

This type of situation is nearly never provable because the opponent would very rarely let it pass if they would suspect this, but it is at least suspected at Linares 1994 between Polgár and Kasparov, or at Sousse Interzonal in 1967 between Matulović and Bilek.

In this case, what would make such a move unsporting, would be that the player has already made a different move.

Other possibilities include cheating using electronics, bribery, collusion to a fake draw, excessively protracting a game whose outcome is, given the level of players, already very unambiguous, and many more. Tournament chess has rules against a player "making no effort to win by normal means", so all these cases are strictly speaking rather illegal than unsporting; but the move ultimately made on the board itself might well still be legal.

Answer 13

From what I've read, in the romantic era it was considered unsporting to decline a gambit or a sacrifice. That would certainly fit the defintion of an unsporting move (under the culture of the time). However, once people came to their senses and realized that playing good moves is more important than trying to prove one's "manhood", all that went away. I can't think of a modern equivalent. Playing the best move is always right. If someone plays a suboptimal move to be "unsporting" (whatever that means), their opponent should refute it by winning, not by whining!

Answer 14

As far as I know playing for time when the game is obviously lost (i.e. trying to make it longer with generally useless moves) is considered unsporting

Answer 15

• Intentionally playing a suboptimal move is always unsuporting, e.g. In a positionally equal game if you have a choice to take opponent's rook or a bishop+pawn and if you do not take the rook rather take bishop+pawn then its unsuporting because you are trying to prove that you know chess better(i.e. trying to prove that (bishop+pawn)>rook)
• Intentionally giving up the opening advantage is considered as unsporting e.g. declining King's Gambit etcs - this is the carlsen's style.
• Playing wrong opening at the outset e.g. h3,e3,d3 or h4,a4 etcs are unsporting.
• Giving up a tempo.
• Not taking up the gambit when the opponent propose a tactical challenge by sacrificing material.
• Playing a positionally weak move is unsporting e.g. blocking your own bishop with your pawn.
• Underestimating opponents strategy e.g. allowing the opponent to open up his file for the rook.

Basically playing wrong intentionally is considered as unsuporting e.g. In the previous world Championship Anand allowed Carlsen to promote his pawn to create a new Queen because there was a long tactic behind it. The tactics was that in a few moves Carlsen had to sacrifice his new Queen to avoid the forced mate. But what Anand did was a blunder. He played 28.Nf1 which opened Carlsen's Queen way to kill the rook. I recall once there was a game of Kramnic vs computer and Kramnik could not see mate in 1. Such type of blunders from the super GM's are very much unsporting.

In short you can say playing a blunder or try to do something different from usual(mainly playing wrong strategy) is considered as unsporting. Sometimes trying to do something unusual is sporting. It is only when there is some deep analysis behind that e.g. in this game Anand played 12.Ng5 a deeply analysed move which to a casual(say under 2500) player at the first glance would appear unusual but it is very much a suporting move. How Aronian played after 12.Ng5 can be called unsporting ;-)