This article was inspired by the “trial match” on Tuesday 15/9/26 which I am running for new players to competitive chess. If any members (or prospective members) want to take part in this you are very welcome!
When players first move into competitive chess, they arrive with a lot of the same questions: what's actually different here? My first answer is always the same — competitive chess is fundamentally the same game you've been playing with friends, just played with the volume turned up. The intensity is higher, and so is the demand on your concentration. Games run longer, clocks are ticking, and holding your focus for two, three, sometimes five hours is a skill in itself.
On top of that, there's a layer of rules and etiquette that casual chess simply doesn't need. Some of these come straight from the FIDE (International Chess Federation) rulebook and rarely get enforced over a kitchen-table game. Others are just customs — unwritten norms that can catch out anyone arriving fresh from online chess, where a click either works or it doesn't.
Mobile Phones
Phones are a live cheating risk in a way they simply weren't a generation ago — a device in your pocket can out-calculate the world champion. Because of that, the standard expectation is that phones stay off during play. Some competitions relax this slightly, allowing silent mode, or occasionally vibrate if a player is genuinely expecting an urgent call — and if that's the case, tell your opponent up front so it isn't a surprise. But the safest habit, and the one I'd recommend by default, is to switch it off completely and leave it face-down where both of you can see it.
The same goes for anything else with a battery in it: headphones, earbuds, smartwatches — all off, all put away. Plain, non-electronic earplugs or earmuffs are fine if you need to shut out background noise. It goes without saying that silence is expected when serious games are being played!
Starting the Game
A handshake before the first move used to be automatic. Since Covid, not everyone's comfortable with that, and nobody should feel obliged to offer or accept one. What matters more is the acknowledgement — a nod, a "good game," a "good luck." It costs nothing and it sets the tone for the hours ahead.
Touch Move
Here's the one rule that trips people up more than any other: there are no takebacks. Touch a piece of yours on purpose, and you're committed to moving it if it has anywhere legal to go. Touch an opponent's piece on purpose, and you're committed to capturing it if a legal capture exists. Once you've placed a piece on a new square and taken your hand off it, that move is done — no second thoughts.
This is usually the hardest habit to build when moving from casual to competitive play, and juniors feel it hardest of all. I've had real success getting young players to sit on their hands between moves — it breaks the reflex to grab a piece before the thinking is finished.
Castling deserves its own mention, because the order you touch the pieces in genuinely changes what you're allowed to do. Use one hand for the whole move, and always touch the king first. Here's why it matters: if you touch the rook before the king, intent doesn't come into it — the rule doesn't ask what you meant. The instant your hand lands on that rook, it's now governed by ordinary touch-move, on its own, and castling on that side is off the table for this move. If the rook has any legal move available, you're obliged to play it. Get the order right and none of this comes up — king first, then the rook.
The Clock
Once you've made your move on the board, press the clock with the same hand you used to move the piece. Don't switch hands mid-motion, and don't hover a finger over the clock waiting to strike — both are against the rules, and arbiters do notice.
Recording the Game
You'll be handed a scoresheet at the start of a competitive game, and it's your job to keep it current — every move, yours and your opponent's, in algebraic notation, move by move. That obligation runs right up until your clock shows under five minutes remaining; after that point you're free to stop recording and put every second into the position in front of you. (This exemption only applies if your time control doesn't add at least 30 seconds per move. With a 30-second (or longer) increment, the clock never gets that tight, so the recording requirement never lifts)
Draws
If you'd like to offer a draw, make your move first, then offer it — not the other way round. Once it's on the table, your opponent can sit with it for a while, accept, decline out loud, or simply play on, which counts as a decline in itself.
In Conclusion
That's the shape of it — a game you already know, wrapped in a few extra layers of discipline: phones off, hands steady, the clock respected, the scoresheet kept, draws offered the right way round. None of it is there to trip you up; it's there so that two hundred people can share a room and trust the same result. Once these habits become second nature, you stop noticing them at all, and what's left is just the chess — the tension of the clock, the thinking, the handshake at the end. I've watched a lot of players make that transition, and almost without exception they come out the other side loving the game more, not less. Competitive chess asks more of you than a casual game ever will, but in my experience it gives back a great deal more too.
Kevin 14/09/26
Postscript
After original publication Justin made contact and suggested a few additions, so here goes!
The first is threefold repetition. If the exact same position comes up on the board three times — same player to move — either player can claim a draw. The repeats don't need to be back-to-back, just three occurrences somewhere across the game. There's a small procedure to it, too: you make the claim on your own move, either by writing down the move that will bring the position back for the third time and telling the arbiter before you play it, or by claiming on the spot once that position has already appeared and it's your turn to move. It isn't automatic — nobody stops the game for you, you have to actually claim it.
The second is promotion — and since you already know what it does, here's what the rules actually require physically at the board. The one-hand rule applies to the whole move, exactly as it does everywhere else: you can't lift the pawn away with one hand and set the new piece down with the other (Article 4.1). The order doesn't matter — you can place the new piece on the promotion square before removing the pawn, or remove the pawn first and place the piece after; FIDE only cares that it happens as one move (Article 4.6.2). If your opponent's piece is sitting on that square, you capture it as part of the same move, same as any other capture (Article 4.6.3). The one situation that actually causes hold-ups is not having a spare queen to hand — most sets only supply one — and the correct response is to pause your own clock and call the arbiter over to provide one (Article 6.11.2). Some players turn a captured rook upside down hoping it will be treated as a queen, but under the Laws it is still just a rook — orientation doesn't change what a piece is — so if there's no spare queen, stop the clock and get the arbiter to supply one (Article 6.11.2), rather than relying on an improvised piece.
Be aware that in club matches there are usually no arbiters, players should attempt to resolve issues themselves and if that fails to bring in the captains.