Stratego community

A version of the referee test set that was migrated from the old forum:

Stratego Refereeing Skill Test



The aim of this test is to help increase the skills of referees in Stratego tournaments.



Questions are based on the ISF game rules and ISF tournament rules as published by the Dutch Stratego Association on their website. Links can also be found from this forum.

While taking the test it is allowed to have these documents at hand. During an actual tournament, it is adviced to have copies of these rules available for lookup and to show players which section of the rules you are basing a decision on

For some questions the answers will not directly be in these documents, but may be derived from them.

Some questions have multiple choice answers. Others have open answers. For questions with open answers, try to describe the steps you take as a referee with reference to the relevant rules in the game rules and/or tournament rules.







Questions



1 There is a tournament starting in Breda. There are 13 senior players there and 11 qualify as juniors

They will play in 2 classes.



Player Tom who became 11 this year, wants to participate in the senior tournament.



Is he allowed to play in the senior tournament?





2 Player Iwan calls the referee from his car. Due to snow he is late for the tournament in Kostopil. The first round is currently being played. Iwan expects to be there before round 1 is finished.



Is Iwan allowed to play or not and if yes in which round? What does this depend on?



3 Annie and Bert are playing in the tournament in Leeuwarden. They agreed to play with clocks. The setup time of 5 minutes is finished, but Bert has not set up all his pieces yet.



Annie wants to start playing because the setup time is finished.



What should she do?



4 Alfonso and Felippe are playing round 1 of a international tournament in Bilbao. The tournament is using the swiss system. After round 1 Alfonso checks the international Stratego rating list on his mobile phone and finds out that his rating used in the imported file was wrong. As a consequence also the round 1 pairing was wrong. He should have been playing against Pablo if the correct rating was used.



What should the referee do now?



5 Bernd and Otto are playing the 3rd round in the German open Championship. At the end of their round Bernd has won and he tells this to the person behind the computer. After round 4 Bernd informs the head referee that the score that is in the system for his game from round 3 was not correct. In the computer there was a draw registered



What should the head referee do?



6 The World Championship is held in London again. There are 32 players in the senior tournament.

Jill is playing as a senior and playing a game with Alan in round 6 of the tournament.



While moving his drink, Alan drops 5 of his pieces and 2 of Jill. Jill calls the referee. Jill and Alan tell the referee that the 2 pieces of Jill were known pieces. The referee decides that they can just continue playing. They continue playing for 2 more minutes but then Jill wants to call the head referee because she just realized that rule 9.1.2 of the game rules applied.



She claims to the chief referee that she was won the game based on this rule.



What should the head referee do here?





7 At the tournament in Duinkerke, Jacques and Bernard are playing in the first round.

Bernard is putting the pieces he captures randomly, but visible in the grayeyard of the Stratego box.



Jacques calls the referee and tells him that he wants Bernard to put them in the official order as they came out of the box originally, Flag, Marshall, Gen, 2 Colos,...



What will the referee reply?



8 In round 5 of the Antwerp tournament Joseph needs an urgent bathroom break. Him and his opponent

Sebastian agree to stop the clock for this break. After 12 minutes Joseph is still not back and Sebastian calls the referee to continue the clock. One minute later Joseph comes back and tells that all the bathrooms were full and he had to wait. There is still 7 minutes on the tournament clock now. Both players have 9 minutes on their individual clocks.



What will the referee decide?



9 In the Athens open tournament Alex is playing with Giorgos. Alex stops the clock and calls the referee. He wants to complain that Giorgos is not putting the pieces correctly in the box. Because the referee is still at another board, it takes 2 minutes before the referee comes to see them.



Giorgos claims he was putting the pieces correctly in the box and that Alex was not allowed to stop the clock for this. The referee sees that the pieces were indeed put correctly, but he can understand that Alex did not know this. This is Alex first tournament.



What will the referee do based on Giorgos claim about not being allowed to stop the clock?





A Tell Alex he should have just continued playing

B Tell both players that they have the right to call the arbiter and stop the clock for this. The arbiter will give extra time to Giorgos for the delay

C Tell both players they have the right to call the arbiter and stop the clock for this. The arbiter will give extra time to both players compared to the overall game clock

D Alex gets a warning for calling the referee and trying to stall time



10 In the Patras tournament Vassilis is playing Christos. Katherina is spectator watching the game, she is about 1 meter away from Christos. She is not playing in the tournament.



Christos calls the referee because he does not like people behind the board.



What will the referee do?

A Tell Christos that he should not call the referee for this

B Tell Katherina to go to the restaurant area, she is not allowed to be in the playing area of the tournament

C Tell Katherina to move further back so that she does not disturb Christos

D Tell Christos not to worry, Katherina does not understand the game so she cannot interfere with it



11 In a very exciting game in Paris an international player named Klaas just hits a lieutenant with his marshall. He immediately calls the referee and says the opponent, Jeanne told him that it was major earlier. He would never show his unknown marshall for a lieutenant. Jeanne is confused but agrees she wrongly said the ranks earlier, but it was an accident. She did not do it on purpose



What will the referee reply?



A This is indeed not ok, Klaas is allowed to swap his marshall with another piece

B Jeanne is given a warning for this, but they have to continue playing

C He cannot check what Klaas says is true, so the referee cannot make a ruling in this

D Klaas should have checked the ranks himself when he hit the piece earlier





12 In Nijmegen Frank and Michel are both playing their first tournament. The tournament is played with clocks and Frank and Michel agree to play with clocks too.



At some point Frank calls the referee and says that Michel is using his right hand to move pieces and his left hand to push the clock.



What will the referee reply?



A Its better not to play with clocks on your first tournament

B Both players should press the clock with the same has as they move their piece

C It is OK for now, after all it is their first tournament













13 During a local tournament in Falisolle, Francois and Pierre are calling the referee. Francois says that Pierre turned over the unknown major without hitting a piece on it. There are 3 different unknonw pieces that could have hit the major, a sergeant to the left of it, a major to the right side of it and a scout from the backrow.



What will the referee do?





14 On the world championship Dave wants to play for France in the National Team cham . He just moved to Paris last year. Dave has a Dutch passport and did play in the Dutch national championship last year.



Will Dave be allowed to play for France?





15 Johan and Julia both scored 39 points in the Dutch national championship. They also have the same Buch points and M-Buch points. In the last round they had a draw, while playing each other.



The next player, Frits has 38 points, but he has more Buch and Mbuch points.



Who is the winner of the tournament? What does this depend on?



16 What is the main objective of the ISF Game rules?



A Ensuring the same interpretation of the rules

B Help organize fair tournaments

C Ensuring good sportmanship

D All of the above





17 Helmut is playing in the Stratego auf dem Baurnhof tournament. He is not winning his game and he keeps throwing all pieces he loses into the game box. He also makes negative comments about each piece he loses. His opponent calls the referee to complain.



What will the referee say?







18 In Thessaloniki Tacitus is playing against Darius. Darius has a scout and is trying to attack a piece between the two lakes as shown in the diagram. Darius first move is the scout to A4. He claims he will get the spy using the 3 moves rule.




Tacitus disagrees. They call the referee.





What will the referee say?



19 In Manchester a tournament is held. Geoffrey is lefthanded and wants to put the clock on his left side.



Is he allowed to do this? What does this depend on?





20 In the Flanders Open tournament Thomas is losing his game against Simon. Thomas moves his General 4 times between F6 and E6 as shown in the diagram.



Simon calls the referee and says this is not allowed




. What will the referee say?

21 In the German Championship Uwe plays his favorite setup against Lotte. Uwe is playing with red and manages to trade the generals. Lotte gives him a hand when the general is exchanged and says well played. They stop the clock.




22 In the next game Uwe plays the same setup against Mario. He is playing with red again.



It ends in a similar situations:



When the Generals are exchanged Uwe wants to claim the win, but Mario calls the referee.



What should the referee do here?

The original post came with this disclaimer and was actually used to discuss the reply of the people trying to take the test in private.

The small print:



-names of players are completely accidental and do not refer to real players

-cases may or may not be based on real live cases encountered in the past but could be dramatized for training purpose

-refereeing is not always a 100 procent follow one rule process. There is interpretation involved

-materials may be used by third parties as long as the authors are credited for the work done

Having not been involved in live tournaments as many Europeans have, I'm really curious about examples 21 and 22 in the above list.

I have always believed that zugzwang (requirement to move) is the guiding principle in these situations. But I'm not sure and would like clarification from those of you who know how the refs view this. In my opinion if the red general attacks the blue general, and these are the final two movable pieces on the board in both situations, why wouldn't the loss go to blue who can no longer move?

If blue simple evades around the lake, however, why couldn't blue secure a draw? And if this is so, how long would a ref allow the red general to pursue the blue general in and obvious draw situation?

Live tournaments are played with a clock, meaning personal time but also a maximum duration for a game. If you wish to, pointlessly, chase a piece in a 100% drawn situation, eventually the game will time out and be declared a draw.

I guess that some refs might decide that it is an absolute waste of time and declare it a draw.


As for the other thing: a win is only awarded in such a case if one player has at least one legal move to make, this means that if you trapped your own piece by moving 3x between 2 fields, the game would still be declared a draw.

So are you saying that when the generals cancel out the game is a draw? That's interesting.

I would have thought it a loss for the player that was required to move next but could not because he had no movable pieces. In others words, the general that attacks wins. But not because of the attack. Rather, because his opponent can't move on his next turn.

In the first situation (21):
Shaking hands and saying good game might be interpreted as giving up the game.

The board situation is a draw however, but if a player gives up, well that overrules the actual board situation.

In the 2nd situation where the arbiter is called with the same board situation (22):
The arbiter should judge that both players have no more moving pieces so it is a draw.

Computers software normally incorrectly check if the next player can move and if they cannot they would give you a loss, but thats not how to game rules are.

Thank you for that clarification of the ISF rules, Morx, and thank you for this solid topic. I appreciate your experience and accept your answer about the way things are. I can see that in any game where there are just two movable pieces in the game and one is chasing the other around the lake, then the game should be a draw, and that an arbiter would rule it as such if called over.

But after the generals cancel? ...to me that should have the same result as one player shaking hands and conceding, which, as you said would be ruled a loss for the conceding player.

On the two gens cancelling, I understand you say that wouldn't matter. But I would argue that this ruling removes the important principle of zugzwang from the game, and therefore would be wrong. Of course, this is merely my opinion. But I dislike inconsistency in the rules and calling a game a draw when it is always one person's turn to move in every other part of the game, is inconsistent in that it makes the ending of the game a special exception to the requirement to move a piece.

Playing devil's advocate against my own position here, I guess that's the way my computer checkers game rules as well. There, if the final two pieces cancel, it's a draw for both just as you describe. It's inconsistent there also in my view, but oh well. Thanks again for the wonderful topic! ??

In checkers an empty board is a draw, in chess only 2 kings remaining is also a draw. It is not so strange that an empty board means a draw.

It would be pretty game ruining for barrage actually.

According to zugzwang, blue should rightly win that barrage game if red is forced to move after the scouts cancel. If not, it's a draw. I don't think either result is wrong, philosophically, but I do maintain my way is better for consistency of zugzwang. But that's the way rules operate. The game would be different under different rules. Would the game be worse under my way?

While it may be the norm for two equal pieces canceling each other to be a draw, as you have given examples in various games, it seems to me in most cases the rule could be applied my way and the result fair to all who understood the rules.

In your chess example I'm no definitely no expert, but wouldn't it be possible for one king to end with the diagonal advantage over his opponent? Such that the one king could force the other to the corner and into a dis-advantageous position to be attacked on the next move?

The rules aren't going to change, I understand.

Actually, there are already rules that back what I am saying in this thread.

Though by quoting the following "rules" I understand the pitfall of doing so being you can prove the moon is made of green cheese if you look at enough different sets of stratego rules.

Regardless, here're a few things to consider on whether one is required to move or strike in his turn to avoid losing:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7xJFBJUCxep8rwZp8

Then there are other variations, some familiar; others, bizarre:

Most of us have probably heard of the debate over whether a scout can move and strike in the same turn. Under today's ISF, of course, a scout can do this. However, this hasn't always been the case. Check out these two examples:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Yd7zs9T63shMZ8Yn7

Other rule variants are a bit more unfamiliar. In the 1961 American version of the game I find the rule that says the winning piece in a battle must take the place of the losing piece. So you could officially move your opponent's piece by striking it with one of yours. A very major difference from how we play now. It would change dramatically the strategy on Two Squares Rule, for one. I have only found this rule in the 1961 game.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/B3ymAFPnx4hxtMzj8

Then what can a spy do? Here's some images with big variants on that. The first says basically that the spy can kill anything that it strikes. The second, that the spy can kill the scout if it attacks the scout.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/B3ymAFPnx4hxtMzj8

So to sum up, there have been lots of differing rules for our game over the years. I'm sure I have not included everything here.

(02-04-2021 01:32 PM)Morx Wrote: [ -> ]In checkers an empty board is a draw, in chess only 2 kings remaining is also a draw. It is not so strange that an empty board means a draw.

In checkers, an empty board is impossible. A player who is to move and cannot, has lost. This includes having pieces that are unmovable (a common confusion among beginners, they think they have a draw).

(02-04-2021 05:15 PM)Nortrom Wrote: [ -> ]It would be pretty game ruining for barrage actually.

It changes slightly advantageous positions (blue is a tempo ahead in threatening the flag) to a winning position. It doesn't make losing positions winning. Hardly game ruining IMO, just game changing.

(02-05-2021 04:26 PM)TemplateRex Wrote: [ -> ]

(02-04-2021 05:15 PM)Nortrom Wrote: [ -> ]It would be pretty game ruining for barrage actually.

It changes slightly advantageous positions (blue is a tempo ahead in threatening the flag) to a winning position. It doesn't make losing positions winning. Hardly game ruining IMO, just game changing.

Exactly so.