Arbiting scenario

[Joseph Conlon]

This situation arose in an U11 county event at Richmond a few weeks ago; I've never seen something like it before and doubt I will again. Interested in what people think.

The situation is a lower board in a 20 board U11 event. The time control is 25 + 5. Nothing out of ordinary is picked up until late in the game, when this is one of the last games to finish, clocks get lower and arbiters/board stewards start paying more attention to the few games left.

Both players are low on time. Watching the game, it is realised that there has been a mistake in the setting of the clocks: the clock was accidentally set on a 5 second delay mode rather than a 5 second increment (this means that the clocks can never go up; a player is allowed 5 seconds to think on each move, and beyond that the time starts counting down, but there is no way to gain time). This is realised at a point where one player has 8 seconds on the clock and the other has 21 seconds (it is unlikely the players had realised the clocks had actually been set with no increment)

After a quick discussion, it was decided to keep the times on the clocks as they were, but adjust them so the increment was now included and continue play. Opinions?

[Kevin Thurlow]

5" a move means 12 moves gain 1 minute. I would be tempted to give them (e.g.) 3 minutes extra and set the clock correctly. They should get a couple of minutes for the disruption anyway. Leaving someone with 8" for the next move is not desirable in my view. I assume nobody had any idea how many moves they made before the error was spotted?

[Ian Thompson]

Both players are low on time. Watching the game, it is realised that there has been a mistake in the setting of the clocks: the clock was accidentally set on a 5 second delay mode rather than a 5 second increment (this means that the clocks can never go up; a player is allowed 5 seconds to think on each move, and beyond that the time starts counting down, but there is no way to gain time). This is realised at a point where one player has 8 seconds on the clock and the other has 21 seconds (it is unlikely the players had realised the clocks had actually been set with no increment)

I'd let the game finish with the incorrect clock settings because interrupting it at that point could affect the result as both players would get free thinking time while the clocks were adjusted.

I assume nobody had any idea how many moves they made before the error was spotted?

That information would be available if the clock was counting clock presses. You could work out how much time each player would have left if the clocks had been set correctly. Doing that could be very unfair on one player if they've used the full delay time every move, so get no more time, while the other player has moved quickly some of the time and gets a couple of minutes more time.

[Paul McKeown]

Joseph,

This was obviously at the recent junior jamboree at Twickenham, and apologies that this happened. I was the Chief Arbiter, but I don't recollect being called for this one; with my other hat as organiser there are always a lot of things going on at the same time, so perhaps I had been called away to deal with some non-chess, but still important stuff.

If it was me that made this decision, though, I got it partly correct in changing the clock from delay to bonus (I guess the clock was an Easyplus, rather than one of our DGT 2010s or DGT 3000s).

However, whether it was me or not, time really ought to have been added to both of the players' clocks, to allow for the time they should have gained during the course of the game.

Kevin is absolutely right. Leaving a few seconds to move is not correct in this situation.

The choice is between giving the players an equal but estimated amount of time added to their clocks, or if the clock was an advanced clock with a press counter (DGT 2010 or DGT 3000) adding press counter times 5 seconds increment to both clocks. A little less than that time might have been added to both clocks if the tournament schedule was in danger of adverse effect, though, might be the advice in an arbiters' training course.

Whether it was me or an assistant who made this decision, is immaterial; I apologise in either case. All I can say is that mistakes are human in the heat of the moment, whether as player or arbiter.

Best wishes,
Paul.

[Paul McKeown]

Incidentally, this is one of the negative characteristics of the DGT Easyplus: it is just too easy to set the clock to Delay rather than Bonus. The things cussedly seem to want to be set to Delay, even though this is never used here in England.

[Alex McFarlane]

Not sure how you would sort this one out.

Consider this extreme situation

White has used 15 minutes for 31 moves, Black has used 20 minutes for 30 moves. The assumption is that Black has suffered, more than White from the wrong clock setting.

However, White took 14 minutes for one move and played the other 30 in 1 minute (each taking less than 5 seconds) so has lost 30 x 3 seconds or 1 min 30 sec.
Black however has played every move in an average 40 seconds and always took at least 5 seconds so has lost no time due to the incorrect clock setting.

In the real world, it is possible (likely?) that the player with more time remaining on their clock has actually been punished more than the slower player for the incorrect setting.

Also the total time on the clocks is unlikely to be significantly different from other clocks and could be explained by the players starting marginally later. Even if you assume that the clocks all started at exactly the same time, the only way to do the maths would be to immediately stop another game to get its clock time and number of moves and then do some time consuming arithmetic.

[Joseph Conlon]

Joseph,

This was obviously at the recent junior jamboree at Twickenham, and apologies that this happened. I was the Chief Arbiter, but I don't recollect being called for this one; with my other hat as organiser there are always a lot of things going on at the same time, so perhaps I had been called away to deal with some non-chess, but still important stuff.

If it was me that made this decision, though, I got it partly correct in changing the clock from delay to bonus (I guess the clock was an Easyplus, rather than one of our DGT 2010s or DGT 3000s).

However, whether it was me or not, time really ought to have been added to both of the players' clocks, to allow for the time they should have gained during the course of the game.

Kevin is absolutely right. Leaving a few seconds to move is not correct in this situation.

The choice is between giving the players an equal but estimated amount of time added to their clocks, or if the clock was an advanced clock with a press counter (DGT 2010 or DGT 3000) adding press counter times 5 seconds increment to both clocks. A little less than that time might have been added to both clocks if the tournament schedule was in danger of adverse effect, though, might be the advice in an arbiters' training course.

Whether it was me or an assistant who made this decision, is immaterial; I apologise in either case. All I can say is that mistakes are human in the heat of the moment, whether as player or arbiter.

Best wishes,
Paul.

It wasn't you Paul: the decision was a combination of myself, Chris Ward and the Richmond lad who was helping out. Nigel approved the decision but you weren't available in the room at the time.

I was curious what people thought because I genuinely don't know what's correct. One view would be that this is the time control they've been playing; let the game end as it starts. On the other hand, it seems very hard in what is meant to be an increment time control to leave someone with 8 seconds on the clock that can only go down.

Another view is to add several minutes, which also seems unfair as time pressure is part of the game and it seems odd for arbiters to step in and relieve extreme time pressure as a sudden deus ex machina.

One thing I feel sure is that this scenario is pretty rare!

[Roger de Coverly]

One thing I feel sure is that this scenario is pretty rare!

If a particular brand and model of clock is programmed in such a way as to make it easy to stumble into the delay setting, the problem will likely recur.

[Paul McKeown]

It wasn't you Paul: the decision was a combination of myself, Chris Ward and the Richmond lad who was helping out. Nigel approved the decision but you weren't available in the room at the time.

I was curious what people thought because I genuinely don't know what's correct. One view would be that this is the time control they've been playing; let the game end as it starts. On the other hand, it seems very hard in what is meant to be an increment time control to leave someone with 8 seconds on the clock that can only go down.

Another view is to add several minutes, which also seems unfair as time pressure is part of the game and it seems odd for arbiters to step in and relieve extreme time pressure as a sudden deus ex machina.

I assume the problem was discovered rather late in the game. As 60 moves of 5 seconds increment would mean 5 extra minutes for both players, but knowing that the timing of these tournaments can be both late and tight, I would probably have suggested something like 3 minutes extra each. Avoids over runs, yet gives both some fair chance to play their games in some sort of sanity. I would have asked both players if they were in agreement (purely for form's sake in this case) and briskly restarted the game.

[Paul McKeown]

As for the suggestion that were one to add time, one would change the nature of the game, I would suggest that indeed the players had not joined a standard play tournament, but on the other hand, they had not signed up to hyperbullet, either.