Ok, for some context, I haven’t played OTB in a while. I decided to go to a local tournament to test if I still got it. The format was a round robin with 6 players, $10 to play and $50 if you win (uscf took 10 out of prize pool.)
As you can see in this position, I’m winning, but I have low time. There was one second increment, so I wasn’t too worried. My opponent had completely given up basically and was just making moves on the 0.00001% chance I would blunder stalemate. When I reached to promote, I accidentally grabbed my opponents queen, put it on the board, and pressed the clock. My opponent immediately paused the clock and called an arbiter to review.
The arbiter was just as baffled as we were tbh, they had to check the USCF rules to determine an outcome. The only issue is that there is no rules about this situation. So we agreed to go by what Fide said, which stated that it was an illegal move. In rapid and classical, my opponent would just get extra time (which means I would have checkmated them,) but in blitz, which was the time format, it means I LOSE.
Final standings:
Opponent I blundered the game to: 5/6
Me: 4.5/6
I got second, which means I didn’t receive the prize pool. The lesson I learned is don’t promote to your opponent’s queen
submitted by /u/Dazzling-Yam-4308[link] [comments]