Mobile Phones (and Grandmasters)

[Steve Collyer]

So very briefly, if I play a game in the Mid-Sussex League, with ECF rating points on the table, my opponents mobile rings (or text message receipt bleep) can I stop the clocks, ask to speak with my team captain & then get a forfeit win?

I'm sorry if this has been answered before but I'm rather confused & have only played 1 & a bit seasons.

[Mike Gunn]

(Unless the rules of the competition specify otherwise) yes. (Read your competition rules. The FIDE Laws can be downloaded from the ECF site.)

[JustinHorton]

Even if you've set it to silent, turning it off doesn't stop the alarm going off. Unless you've turned the alarm off as well, of course.

[Anthony Higgs]

So very briefly, if I play a game in the Mid-Sussex League, with ECF rating points on the table, my opponents mobile rings (or text message receipt bleep) can I stop the clocks, ask to speak with my team captain & then get a forfeit win?

I'm sorry if this has been answered before but I'm rather confused & have only played 1 & a bit seasons.

The MSL has no specific rules regarding mobile phones, so the normal FIDE laws of chess apply. As an evening league with no prize money though, it is common for leeway to be granted - earlier this season a member of my team was late due to a suicide on the railway line delaying the trains, and the opposition captain agreed to me leaving my phone on silent/vibrate to communicate with him until he turned up, at which point I switched the phone off. I made my own opponent aware of this too and there was no problem.

Technically he could claim a win but why would he travel to his club just to do that? Both players rightly want to play a game of chess.

[Steve Collyer]

So very briefly, if I play a game in the Mid-Sussex League, with ECF rating points on the table, my opponents mobile rings (or text message receipt bleep) can I stop the clocks, ask to speak with my team captain & then get a forfeit win?

I'm sorry if this has been answered before but I'm rather confused & have only played 1 & a bit seasons.

The MSL has no specific rules regarding mobile phones, so the normal FIDE laws of chess apply. As an evening league with no prize money though, it is common for leeway to be granted - earlier this season a member of my team was late due to a suicide on the railway line delaying the trains, and the opposition captain agreed to me leaving my phone on silent/vibrate to communicate with him until he turned up, at which point I switched the phone off. I made my own opponent aware of this too and there was no problem.

Technically he could claim a win but why would he travel to his club just to do that? Both players rightly want to play a game of chess.

Ok thanks for that, Anthony.
You may well see me at your club next season, because I think Crawley is going to struggle to exist.
Horsham, by contrast, has a very strong local reputation - especially for youth players.

[Matthew Turner]

Steve,
Until July 1st, I think if your phone rings then you lose, but this doesn't mean that the opponent wins. In most league matches where the team captains act as arbiters then it would be up to them to determine whether the opponent of the player whose phone rang won or drew. This could be fun!

[Mike Truran]

Yes, but as far as I'm aware FIDE rules only relate to FIDE rated events. Local leagues as non FIDE rated events are under no compulsion to adopt FIDE rules (so I disagree with Anthony's post, pending of course correction by a higher authority). Last time I looked local leagues were still basically amateur - the likelihood of players using their phones to cheat is somewhere between remote and non-existant, and anyway the punishing time limits would be a major obstacle to nipping outside into the freezing winter air to get Fritz fired up on one's mobile phone) If local leagues are nonetheless sufficiently jobsworth and legalistic to adopt a rule requiring someone playing chess for enjoyment after a hard day's work to be defaulted half-way through a game because his phone "produces a sound", they deserve the right to sort out the consequences. The shambolic episode in the Oxford and District League of a couple of seasons ago still lingers in the memory. In practice, most players in local leagues just want to play chess. Phones have gone off twice so far this season in O&DL matches I've played in. In each case eyebrows were raised, phones were switched off quickly and the game simply carried on. Anyway, compared with the racket that normally goes on throughout most O&DL matches, with latecomers strolling in for their games, sets being noisily set up and cleared away, people ambling around discussing your game behind your back, pieces being vigorously banged down in nearby five minute games, completed games being loudly analysed just as your flag is about to fall at the end of a game etc etc - a mobile phone could go off for minutes on end and still only count as a minor interruption.

[William Metcalfe]

Ok what would you do in this situation this happened to me [twice before somebody mobile has gone off in games v me and i just carried on playing the game after they turned off the phone]

I was playing my game it was my move and my opponents phone went off instead of turning it off he proceded to answer the phone and chat away then he stood up and walked through the playing room still chatting away on the phone i acually claimed the game as our league does have a rule about mobiles going off.

[Sean Hewitt]

Ok what would you do in this situation this happened to me [twice before somebody mobile has gone off in games v me and i just carried on playing the game after they turned off the phone]

I was playing my game it was my move and my opponents phone went off instead of turning it off he proceded to answer the phone and chat away then he stood up and walked through the playing room still chatting away on the phone i acually claimed the game as our league does have a rule about mobiles going off.

I would stop the clocks, write 1-0 on the scoresheet, and retire to the bar!

[Mike Gunn]

(As pointed out on the SCCU website about a year ago) the ECF only grade games which conform to the FIDE Laws, so if the games in your league are graded (I'm guessing they are) then the mobile phone law applies.

(In practice it's not quite as simple as this as some FIDE Laws are not universally applied, e.g. recording the gamescore in algebraic.) The mobile phone law seems to be one of those issues which split chessplayers into two camps, either you think it is too draconian and should be ignored (for at least part of the time) or you think it's part of the Laws of chess and should always be obeyed.

[JustinHorton]

In practice, most players in local leagues just want to play chess.

We do, but we also want to do so under conditions that make it possible to concentrate on our chess, which means we don't want certain things: people talking loudly, people playing blitz chess, people's mobiles going off, people practising their singing in the room next door. The last of these is probably the most disruptive, but it's the one we can't do anything about: so we have rules of various strengths, according to the outlook of any given league and its officials, about the first three.

[Mike Truran]

Yes, I'd forgotten singing next door, together with bands practising, Morris dancers leaping around and a range of other diverting village activities! People playing blitz chess, talking loudly etc? The current general public mood, rules or otherwise, seems to be more tolerant of these misdemeanours than of mobile phones, even though blitz playing and talking loudly are generally much more prevalent and disruptive than phones going off. There certainly seems to be a lot more heat generated by the latter than the former.

[JustinHorton]

I think that's because mobiles are newer, and more controversial: everybody agrees that talking and blitzing shouldn't be engaged in, including people who habitually do both. But opinions on mobiles - at least as regards their ringing, rather than actually proceeding to conversation - are more divided.

[Mike Truran]

Well, it still feels somewhat illogical to me. As far as I know there are no league rules that require somebody for example to be ejected from a club room or barred from playing in a future league match for talking loudly behind players' backs and disrupting their concentration while a match was in progress - and if there were, they certainly wouldn't be on a "one strike and you're out" basis. Not an exact analogy I know, but it just seems that the mobile phone discussion goes a bit OTT sometimes.

[Kevin Thurlow]

External noise can be much worse... I recall a match where a band was rehearsing next door - after a while some of the players started singing along and we had a good laugh. Judo and karate clubs meeting in the next room or above (even better!) are good value for disturbance. A club in Essex had dog obedience classes in the next room. Redhill has Scottish Country Dancing below the club room, but the music is reasonably quiet - in contrast the Line Dancers on our other night want the whole street to join in. But I guess we tolerate all that as external noise. If a player in the same room knocks a piece onto the floor, we all turn round and glare. What is really irritating is somebody talking loudly and you ask them to quieten down, which they do - until you sit down again... Worst of all is the person who "shushes" everybody when they're playing, then shouts and screams as soon as he's finished.

Kevin