Default Rules

[Richard Bates]

Just as a discussion point, does the 4NCL need to come up with a clearer protocol for the application of default rules in the light of what seemed, to this casual non directly affected observer, rather farcical (non-)implementation on the Saturday of the recent weekend? I have no issue with flexibility being shown on default times (especially considering the additional penalties applicable for falling foul of them) but it surely can't be right (assuming it is even technically allowable under FIDE rules) for people to be starting their games with 15-20 minutes left on their clock? The way it happened I presume that if the trains had been that little bit more delayed then some people might have even been allowed to start with as little as a minute on their clock at the start of the game?

If default times are to be relaxed then fine. But surely the best solution is to treat the relaxation as a delay (say of 40 minutes - to the period of flag fall) - ensuring that no individual is more than an hour down at the start of the game? I doubt that 40 minutes is going to totally undermine too many dinner plans.

I think it should also be clearer as to when leniency will be shown - is advance notification of difficulties required or not? (not much point putting notices on the website insisting on such (individual) advance notification if such notices are then deviated from in practice, which is what seemed to happen in some cases) Also is the leniency determined by the arbiters alone, or does the opponent have a say?

[Alex Holowczak]

I think it should also be clearer as to when leniency will be shown - is advance notification of difficulties required or not? (not much point putting notices on the website insisting on such (individual) advance notification if such notices are then deviated from in practice, which is what seemed to happen in some cases) Also is the leniency determined by the arbiters alone, or does the opponent have a say?

Speaking as one of the arbiters who implemented the decisions on defaults in Round 5 at Hinckley Island.

The leniency in the default times was only shown where we knew that the players would arrive late in advance. All of the latecomers in Round 5 at Hinckley Island were stuck on the A14 in and around Huntingdon, where there were severe travel problems; this affected numerous Anglian Avengers, as well as those travelling from Cambridge University. (Fun fact: The four latecomers travelling from Cambridge University played for Guildford, White Rose, Kings Head and Grantham Sharks. None actually played for Cambridge University!)

The decision was made by the Chief Arbiter, and all of the players and captains concerned were happy with the decision when spoken to. The players and captains were informed what would happen before their game had started. If a captain or player had objected, I'd have directed him to DW.

Had the late arrival/travel problems not been notified in advance, then this leniency would not have applied. This was discussed in the Office, and the reasoning was that if they deviated from that, then nobody would bother to notify people in advance in future.

At the start of play, there was a list of 10-15 names that the arbiters had, which listed expected latecomers due to travel problems. All of them made it.

[Richard Bates]

SNIP

Fair enough on the latter point. The arbiters were obviously better informed than at least one of the team captains who wasn't aware until after the start of the game that some players would be late! Are delays caused by traffic problems always "notifiable" in advance these days, or is it only dependent on known wider travel problems eg. snow, floods etc?

To be fair to me ( ) it was more the way the default times were waived that seemed dubious to me. Could people have started with 1 minute on their clock? Do FIDE actually technically allow default times to be waived in this way (in the old days i always assumed that part of the motivation behind the standard default time was to ensure that players always started with a minimum period on their clock, although that may just be nonsense).

[Brian Valentine]

I was one of the affected parties in Division 3. My opponent was delayed. At the start it was announced that "common sense would operate".

The problem is that this was very imprecise. As the hour approached I asked the controller what I should do, meaning should I stop the clock or would a controller. After a delay he then said I had to wait another 40 minutes till my opponent's flag fell.

My opponent arrived after 72 minutes. He was stressed (it was a tree fall, not A14) and I was mentally AWOL. I was lucky to get a short draw.

I would prefer there to be clearer rules. I could argue that the solution was not necessarily "common sense".

I've no gripe with my opponent and another of our team did not claim a mobile phone infringement (no arbiter around to hear)- he did not finish till 9:15! We are here to play chess, but there are default rules for a reason.

[Alex Holowczak]

Fair enough on the latter point. The arbiters were obviously better informed than at least one of the team captains who wasn't aware until after the start of the game that some players would be late! Are delays caused by traffic problems always "notifiable" in advance these days, or is it only dependent on known wider travel problems eg. snow, floods etc?

I don't know if they're "always" notifiable, this is the first time I've been promoted from games-inputter to arbiter/games-inputter.

I think wider travel problems were expected, but in reality, I think the A14 incident might have been separate from that. I don't know. I suspect the fear was that there would be a large number of players defaulted because of it, and obviously that was impossible to predict when we found out about it at about 12:30pm. I think it just comes down to a judgement call.

To be fair to me ( ) it was more the way the default times were waived that seemed dubious to me. Could people have started with 1 minute on their clock? Do FIDE actually technically allow default times to be waived in this way (in the old days i always assumed that part of the motivation behind the standard default time was to ensure that players always started with a minimum period on their clock, although that may just be nonsense).

I've seen both implemented. At the County Finals, the clocks were frozen at 30 minutes, but here they continued to run. I suppose the difference is that actually, it'd be 40 moves in 1 minute + 30 seconds per move, so it's actually 40 moves in about 20 minutes.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

There were trees on other train lines as well. Fortunately the trains were still running out of Euston. I had been worried when checking on the Saturday morning to find that the service was reduced to 2 of 4 lines operating, but it didn't really seem to make any difference. That's one advantage to travelling to somewhere that is a pain to get to by public transport (Daventry, not Hinckley), in that you tend to allow plenty of time anyway.

[Roger de Coverly]

There were trees on other train lines as well.

There were trees on the M40 as well. I managed to get an indirect message through to Hinckley that I would be seriously late. As it happens, I made the standard default time with about three minutes to spare. 40 moves in sixty minutes is relatively easy. I once had to do 35 in 45 because of South Circular delays for a county match. I survived that, but my position didn't.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"I would prefer there to be clearer rules. I could argue that the solution was not necessarily "common sense"."

Very mild! There is always a problem when the rules/Laws are randomly ignored, as it is unfair to other people. This could lead to huge arguments in the future when someone is stuck in traffic and is defaulted ten seconds before he arrives...

It's fair enough if the player waiting agrees of course, but as Brian says, it's stressful waiting as well. In a team event, I would insist on the default at the appropriate time anyway. Were any matches decided by the lack of defaults? It would be unfortunate if a team got relegated or nor promoted because of this!

[Graham Borrowdale]

I've no gripe with my opponent and another of our team did not claim a mobile phone infringement (no arbiter around to hear)- he did not finish till 9:15! We are here to play chess, but there are default rules for a reason.

To be fair to your player, namely me, my understanding is that it is not the player's place to 'claim' in the case of mobile phone infringement, but if my opponent had signed the scoresheet in' resignation' I could not and would not have complained. I am not sure whether my ambivalence reflects badly on me, badly on my opponent, or badly on both of us. I guess I had the last laugh - play through the game if you can't get to sleep!

[Kevin Thurlow]

"my understanding is that it is not the player's place to 'claim' in the case of mobile phone infringement"

true - it's like flag fall, or checkmate or stalemate, it's a fact. There are an awful lot of people who lose on time who start whining "are you going to claim it?". The correct answer is "I'm not claiming anything, I'm stating a fact"

But if you want to play on after the opponent's 'phone has made a noise, that's up to you. The only problem is that if someone else loses on 'phone, they start complaining as the other guy in the room didn't lose!

[Graham Borrowdale]

But if you want to play on after the opponent's 'phone has made a noise, that's up to you.

Maybe true, but how exactly would I not play on without making a claim?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Maybe true, but how exactly would I not play on without making a claim?"

What I meant was you do not have to make a claim, just state that his phone made a noise. When his phone makes a sound, he has lost (unless you do not have mating material), so you can just write down 1-0 on the score sheet and clear off. It's not like claiming a draw on adjudication.

I do take the point though. I won a game on default many years ago in a club match and wandered off to play Blitz with another lucky winner. Fifteen minutes after the default time, my opponent arrived and screamed abuse at me for refusing to play the game, so you could argue I had to claim that one...

[Ian Thompson]

"my understanding is that it is not the player's place to 'claim' in the case of mobile phone infringement"

true - it's like flag fall, or checkmate or stalemate, it's a fact.

It may be true, but if the arbiter didn't observe it, it isn't a 'fact' until proven to the arbiter's satisfaction.

About 18 months ago I played in a tournament where the mobile phone of the player sitting next to me rang while the arbiter was out of the room. Someone, not the player's opponent, told the arbiter. The arbiter asked the player if his phone had rung. The player said no. The arbiter took the player out of the room to discuss the matter. A few minutes later they returned and the game continued.

In my view justice was done in this game eventually - the player resigned in a completely drawn position thinking he was lost when he had a perpetual check.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

About 18 months ago I played in a tournament where the mobile phone of the player sitting next to me rang while the arbiter was out of the room. Someone, not the player's opponent, told the arbiter. The arbiter asked the player if his phone had rung. The player said no. The arbiter took the player out of the room to discuss the matter. A few minutes later they returned and the game continued.

Is it not possible that the player in question thought someone else's mobile phone had rung?

I'm thinking here of phone set-ups where the phone beeps (e.g. on receipt of a text message) or vibrates on silent alert but the sound of the vibration is still heard. In both cases, that is enough for a default, but it does create enough genuine confusion that it is possible to claim (in some cases correctly) that someone else's phone went off. In other cases, it becomes impossible to prove anything without conducting a search and examining the call logs of the phone (providing the logs aren't deleted). The situation most people think off is the loud and persistent ringing (usually with an annoying ringtone) and scrabbling around in the coat pocket to switch off the phone, with apologetic looks at other players. But there are other scenarios.

What if a phone rings while several people are out of the room, no-one comes forward to turn the phone off, and the phone then stops ringing. Do you require everyone (including those out of the room at the time) to inspect their phones to see if it was their phone that went off?

[David Sedgwick]

Is it not possible that the player in question thought someone else's mobile phone had rung?

This happened to me in a London League match a few years ago.

The unmistakeable sound of an incoming text message struck my left ear. I knew that it couldn't be from my phone, as I recalled turning it off.

I turned to look accusingly at the player on the next board. He, his opponent and my opponent did not react at all.

Only later did I discover the awful truth. My phone must have turned itself on in my pocket.

I didn’t feel under any obligation to say or do anything, as under the London League rules I would have been entitled to a warning in any case. Don’t ask me the morally challenging question as to what if anything I would have done had that last point not applied.