The mention upthread does not seem very accurate to me.Ian Thompson wrote:The effect of this walkover on winning rating prizes has been mentioned above. If he had played you, would it have counted for this purpose?David Sedgwick wrote: For the record, I offered to play him as a filler. Ollie opted to take the win by default. His father said that he had homework to do.
I don't know for certain that Ollie Howell won a prize, but it looks to me as though he will have won the U18 rating prize.
The rating prizes were awarded on the basis of actual score less expected score, so he gained nothing from the Round 8 win by default.
Had he played me, I would have expected the game to count. However, as his rating is 1575 and mine is 1943, he would not have lost many rating points even had he lost the game.
In that scenario, his then Round 9 opponent would have been lower rated than his actual opponent. However, I think that even a loss against the alternative opponent would still have resulted in his winning the prize.