Touch-Move Rule
The competitive rule that a player who deliberately touches a piece must move it if legally possible.
Touching an opponent's piece obliges a player to capture it if a legal capture exists. The rule exists largely to prevent players from testing several moves physically before committing to one.
Etymology
The touch-move rule is one of chess's oldest formalized codes of conduct, aimed at stopping players from physically testing multiple candidate moves on the board before settling on one. Its necessity — and its most famous enforcement controversy — was demonstrated in 1967, when grandmaster Milan Matulović moved a bishop, pressed his clock, then took the move back and played something else entirely, protesting "J'adoube" only after Bilek objected; the tournament director sided with Matulović for lack of proof, and Matulović was nicknamed "J'adoubovic" by his own outraged compatriots ever after. The rule's companion mechanism, the French phrase j'adoube ("I adjust"), lets a player announce in advance that they intend only to straighten a piece on its square, not to move it — a verbal opt-out first documented in English chess manuals by 1808.
Translations
Translations for this term haven't been added yet.