OTB Pawn Promotion Issue

In a high school tournament, claiming FIDE rules,(or even USCF, or any other official ruling system) is a player required to say which peice the pawn is being promoted to? Or is simply placing the peice accepted as official?

Student argued that if a peice is not verbally identified, placing the queen was illegal. General FIDE rules do not give a response. If someone official has a response, or if anyone can identify the rule in the coding, it would be much appreciated. If the rule does not exist (as I suspect) I am fine and dandy with that as well. 

I'm also quite curious about this. If anyone knows the answer that would be great.

AFAIK under FIDE rules, the verbal announcement of which piece the pawn is promoted to is only prescribed for games involving blind and visually handicapped players (FIDE LoC, Appendix E(2)(1)). In normal play however there is no such requirement and LoC only says "...the choice of the piece is finalised, when the piece has touched the square of promotion." (4.4(d))

Further, the rules regarding the end of a move (4.6) only requires "The move is then considered to have been made... in the case of the promotion of a pawn, when the pawn has been removed from the chessboard and the player's hand has released the new piece after placing it on the promotion square" and "The move is called legal when all the relevant requirements of Article 3 have been fulfilled." None of these mentioned texts require announcements of any sort.

So I think you found a sore loser In any case, if they accuse you of a rule infringement, shouldn't they be the ones pointing out the rule you broke in order to prove your guilt rather than the other way round with you having to prove your innocence?

An unusual situation occurred in a 1993 game between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov. Karpov was in serious time trouble, with one minute to make 16 moves. In this position, Kasparov captured the rook on d1 with the pawn on c2, and said "Queen!", indicating that the promoted piece was a queen. However, no queen was immediately available. It took some time for the arbiter to come up with a black queen. Kasparov said that if he had been attentive, he would have promoted to a rook, which was available. Kasparov's clock was running while the arbiter was getting a queen, so he started Karpov's clock. Karpov immediately played 25.Qxe4 and Kasparov told him that he was in check. Karpov replied "From what? It might be a bishop on d1." The clocks were stopped. The arbiter found a black queen, the game was backed up to the position after 24...cxd1=Q+, and Karpov was given an extra two minutes on his clock because of Kasparov's illegal move. Kasparov disputes that he made an illegal move. Kasparov soon won the game, however.

You don't have to announce the piece, that's silly.

You must verbally identify the piece, in every language your opponent is able to speak. If he's chinese and you can't say "I promote this d pawn in a rook" in cantonese, you automatically lost the game. If he's not there when you promote, just write "I'm sorry, you wasn't there and I promote a pawn without telling you what piece I choose, but I wrote you etc etc"  (translate in cantonese, if not, you lost the game).

You do not have to announce what you are making it unless you are playing against a blind player, in which case, you are supposed to announce all moves, like "e4" on move 1 and "a8 equals Queen" on move 47.

That said, there is a totally separate issue that players fail to realize.  Under no circumstances can you leave it a pawn.  It is not my job to assume that it's a Queen.  It's also not my job to physically replace the pawn with the Queen.  If you leave it a pawn "physically", regardless of what you "verbally" say, I have every right to hit the clock right back, without moving, mandating that you promote the pawn.

In addition, again assuming you are not playing against a blind person, I could verbally say Queen, and physically place a Knight there.  In such a scenario, what I say means absolutely NOTHING.  It's what I put there.  If I put a Knight on a8 (assuming I'm White) in place of the pawn I just pushed there from a7, I could say "Queen!", "King Me!", "You Lose!", etc, all I want, but it doesn't change the fact that officially my move was a8=N.

Another thing that was a problem in one of my last tournaments:

You have to put the pawn on the eight rank and then retire the pawn and put the piece.

You can´t remove the pawn that is on the 7th rank and put a piece on the 8th.

How to do a pawn promotion.

You move the pawn you want to promote from the 7. rank to the correct square on the 8. rank. If it took anything, you should remove the piece it captured from the board.

(Optional: After placing the pawn on the 8. rank, you can stop your own clock. Very usefull in time trouble or if you opponent holds your queen)

You should now remove the pawn from the board, and place the piece on the correct square. If the pawn promoted on e8, you must place your queen or knight or whatever on e8.

You can now start your opponents time.

On a similar note, a friend of mine (American player) was playing in some youth championship outside of the USA, and when he intended to promote to a queen, he instead put an upside-down rook on the board. This is commonplace in the US but not really outside of America. A pretty big argument ensued and eventually the arbiters insisted that it remained a rook.

In Tal´s My Life and Games, he mentions that in one game he put a rook upside-down he says that this was a "common way among chessplayers to show that is a queen" (not exact quote). Then he mentions that when he could get the queen he replaced the rook some moves later.

Hmm interesting, I wonder why the arbiters were unaware of this then.

So what did they propose as a solution then??? Since you touched your pawn to promote, you are obligated to move it and it had to be promoted then. I thought illegal moves don't lead to forfeiture of games (at least where I live); the move must be taken back I thought with a warning, and if you do it a second time, it may be a time penalty.

During the years that I have played chess, it's been a common practice to tell your opponent the piece that you're promoting to, mainly because it's one they have captured, it's on their side of the board, and it's easier to have them hand it to you (or even place it on the promotion square) than to reach across the table.

Since most people learn the rules verbally from others (why consult the rule book when the person standing next to you knows the rules), it looks as if someone has decided that this common practice is a rule.

I don't know exactly the fide (or uscf) rule about that but I've always seen players placing their queen on the board and never push the pawn on the 8th rank (except of beginners).

I don't have the USCF rule book in front of me, but I've read it, and I'm familiar with the rule on pawn promotion. Wafflemaster is right, you don't need to verbally announce the promotion piece. Simply replacing the moved pawn with the promotion piece and releasing the piece completes the promotion.

The FIDE rule is similar:

http://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=124&view=article

Just use your browser to search for something like "promot".

You can tell your opponent verbally or simply let him figure it out when you place the promoted piece on the board.

If it's not covered under FIDE or USCF rules it's simple common sense and only a person losing would try to make a big deal out of it and try to cry foul. 

You do not have to verbally announce what piece you are promoting to, and in fact doing so may break the rule on disturbing your opponent. As for other issues, upside down rooks are just rooks (not queens), and the issue of how you promote (can you put a queen on the 8th rank and remove a pawn on the 7th) have been addressed by the FIDE Rules Commission (NB there will be a change from 1 July 2014).

http://rules.fide.com is a useful (and official) resource

Depends on whose rules apply.  USCF 8F.7 "...an upside-down rook shall be considered a queen.."

For FIDE Rated events, FIDE Rules apply (and the USCF have now agreed to this from 1 July 2014).