Toward Over-the-Board Play
An inquiry into the conditions for physical Raumschach
The IRF was founded as an online institution, and it will remain one for some years. Online and correspondence play are fully rated under the EloR system, fully governed by the official rules, and fully sufficient to establish a player’s standing in the federation. There is no second-class status attached to a game conducted across a network rather than across a table. The charter’s § VIII makes this explicit: online play is “fully equivalent to over-the-board play for rating and tournament purposes.”
And yet the question presents itself, even at the federation’s founding, because there is something irreducibly different about physical play — the weight of a piece in the hand, the shared silence of two people bent over a board, the three-dimensional apparatus rising between them. Flat chess has never abandoned this. It would be a small sadness if Raumschach never found its way to a table.
This article does not announce that over-the-board (OTB) play is imminent. It is not. It identifies, carefully and honestly, what would be required, and proposes a sequence of stages by which the federation and its members might eventually arrive there. It is, in the best sense, speculative — an inquiry into a possible future, written to invite thought and, in time, action.
One structural note: the IRF captures an optional country and region field for each member. This data exists partly for the mundane purpose of understanding where players are. But it exists also because geographic clustering — three or four members within practical travel of one another — is the seed from which any physical game must grow.
Flat chess has an embarrassment of physical instantiations. Tournament sets are standardized by FIDE; the Staunton pattern has governed competition pieces since 1849. Any chess supply shop in any moderately large city will sell you a serviceable set for the price of a restaurant meal.
Raumschach has nothing of the kind. No manufacturer produces a commercial Raumschach set. No standard design has been established. Maack himself played on stacked boards with ordinary flat-chess pieces modified or substituted for the purpose. This is the first and most fundamental obstacle to OTB play, and it is the one most susceptible to creative resolution by the membership.
A physical set must allow two players sitting opposite each other to track 40 pieces moving across 125 cells distributed across five levels without ambiguity, fatigue, or frequent need to physically disturb the arrangement. This places several demands on any design.
The IRF does not presently mandate a single physical standard beyond the rules of § IV. What it proposes is this: when a member constructs or commissions a set that functions well in practice, that member is invited to submit the design — with photographs, materials list, and dimensions — for publication as an IRF reference design. The first such submission accepted will be designated the IRF Reference Set and made available to all members as a reproducible template.
A physical set is necessary but not sufficient. It requires two players willing to sit at it. This may seem trivially obvious, and yet it has been the historically binding constraint on Raumschach: the game was too obscure, the sets too non-existent, the players too scattered, to ever reliably produce two of them in the same room.
The IRF proposes three registered members within practical travel distance of one another as the threshold for a nascent local chapter — not two, because two players may each have legitimate schedule conflicts that leave them with no game; three ensures that, on any given weekend, at least two can meet. “Practical travel distance” is understood to mean within two hours by ordinary means. A car journey, a train, a bus: not a flight.
The optional country and region field in member registration exists partly to identify exactly these clusters. When a cluster of three or more arises in any region, the IRF administrator will note it and, with the members’ permission, make the connection explicit in the IRF’s communication to those members. No formal chapter structure is required; the IRF has no apparatus for governing local associations and does not seek to create one. What is needed is only an introduction.
FIDE maintains a tiered arbiter system of considerable complexity: National Arbiters, FIDE Arbiters, and International Arbiters, each with formal certification requirements, examination procedures, and title norms. An International Arbiter badge is not quickly or cheaply obtained. This system is appropriate for a federation administering tournaments attended by hundreds of players, many of whom may attempt to exploit ambiguities in the rules.
The IRF is not that federation, and is unlikely to become it within the time horizon of this article. For a small OTB game between two or four players, what is actually required of an arbiter is much simpler: knowledge of the IRF rules, the trust of both players, physical presence for the duration of the game, and the willingness to make a decision when one is required.
The IRF therefore defines a Qualified Arbiter as follows:
A Qualified Arbiter is any Rated Member of the IRF who has held that status for at least six months, has not competed in the event being arbitrated, and has passed the IRF Arbiter Examination. The examination consists of a written test on the IRF Official Tournament Rules (§ IV of the charter), administered by the IRF administrator. A passing score is 80% or above. Passed examinations are recorded in the member’s file and noted in the Results Register.
One Qualified Arbiter is sufficient for an event of four or fewer players. Events of five to eight players should have two. For events larger than eight players, the administrator should be consulted; at that scale the federation is in territory it has not yet mapped.
The Arbiter Examination does not yet exist as a formal document. Its preparation is among the administrative tasks that will accompany the maturation of the federation. Any member who would like to serve as an arbiter for OTB play is encouraged to make this interest known to the administrator; the examination will be prepared and administered on request when a sufficient number of members have expressed interest.
The IRF is constituted as a voluntary association without legal incorporation, without a bank account, and without a physical headquarters. It cannot rent venues, hold funds in trust, or contract with third parties. This is a deliberate design choice and not a deficiency: it keeps the federation’s governance simple, its obligations minimal, and its survival dependent on nothing except the continued interest of its members.
For early OTB play, this means that venue arrangements are a local matter entirely. Members playing in each other’s homes require no external coordination. Members wishing to use a more formal space — a library meeting room, a chess club, a café with a reserved table — arrange and share costs among themselves without involving the federation.
This is, for an early-stage game with small local clusters, entirely sufficient. A kitchen table and a homemade set are a perfectly honorable venue for a rated Raumschach game, provided the official rules govern play and the result is submitted correctly. The dignity of the occasion derives from the game, not the room.
For hypothetically larger events — a city-level gathering of a dozen players, or a national championship — more structured venue arrangements become necessary. At that stage, a local organizing committee, acting independently of the IRF, would be the natural vehicle for fundraising, sponsorship, and cost recovery. Spectator admission, as the charter’s § VII contemplates, becomes relevant at that scale. The IRF would provide the rules, the official arbiter designation, and the rating calculations; the local committee would provide everything else. This is exactly the model used by most national-level chess organizations when they host FIDE events, and it is a well-understood structure.
That scale of event is, at present, genuinely distant. It is mentioned here only to note that the federation’s constitutional structure does not prevent it; it merely places the organizational work where it belongs, with the people who are physically present and invested in the outcome.
What follows is not a plan with dates. It is a description of the path as it can presently be seen — a sequence of thresholds, each of which must be crossed before the next becomes meaningful. Progress through these stages may take years; it may also happen faster than expected if the right members appear.
Online and correspondence play only.
All IRF play is online or by correspondence. The rating system, the tournament calendar, and the notation standard are all in operation. No physical set has been built to IRF specifications. Members are geographically dispersed. This is the current state.
A reproducible physical design is established.
One or more members construct a physical Raumschach set and submit the design to the IRF. The administrator reviews it against § IV and, if compliant, publishes it as the IRF Reference Set with full documentation. From this point, any member anywhere can build one. The design problem, which has gone unsolved since Maack, is closed.
A local gathering of three or more members forms.
The country and region data reveals three or more members within two hours of one another. The administrator makes the introduction. They begin meeting informally, perhaps using a set built from the Stage 1 reference design. These games may be rated (submitted as correspondence-equivalent Classical games) or friendly. No arbiter is required for friendly play.
A local event with a Qualified Arbiter is organized.
The cluster grows to include a Qualified Arbiter. A small round-robin or match — two to four players — is organized at an agreed location. Games are played under Classical time controls using a physical set and a physical clock. Results are submitted to the IRF administrator. These become the first OTB-rated games in the federation’s history. A record is kept.
Multiple clusters, or a larger gathering within a country, produce an organized tournament.
Two or more local clusters exist in proximity, or one cluster has grown to eight or more members. A local organizing committee arranges a venue, coordinates travel, and runs the event independently. The IRF provides the rules and the rating calculations. If membership levels permit, the event may eventually be designated an IRF Open or, in time, a national championship. At this stage, the question of spectators and cost recovery becomes genuinely relevant, and the structures described in § VII of the charter come fully into play.
This article describes a road. Whether it is walked, and how quickly, depends entirely on the members. The IRF can publish standards and record results, but it cannot build sets, convene meetings, or will geographic clusters into existence. Those things require people who are willing to do them.
Three specific invitations are extended to any member who finds this question interesting:
Maack envisioned, in 1908, “a future conference” of Raumschach players. It did not come in his lifetime. Whether it comes in ours is an open question, and the answer will be found not in this document but in the behavior of the people who read it.
Published under the authority of the IRF,
in the year 2026.