Mobile phone penalties.

Eoin Devane · Post by **Eoin Devane** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:26 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote:Should we be adding "Arbiter's discretion." to this?

I guess that might be an idea. If I edit the poll will it keep the current results?

Carl Hibbard · Post by **Carl Hibbard** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:30 pm

Eoin Devane wrote:I guess that might be an idea. If I edit the poll will it keep the current results?

I would think so though but I am not 100% sure

Eoin Devane · Post by **Eoin Devane** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:36 pm

Okay - I edited it and it seems it didn't keep the results. Sorry everyone, but you'll have to vote again!

isaac wallis · Post by **isaac wallis** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:07 pm

A warning then default won't work. People will just leave their phones on knowing they can get away with one call. Next round their phone will be on again.

Richard Bates · Post by **Richard Bates** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:17 pm

isaac wallis wrote:A warning then default won't work. People will just leave their phones on knowing they can get away with one call. Next round their phone will be on again.

Nonsense. The vast majority of players are happy to accept the concept that having a phone interrupt the game is bad etiquette. And consequently will endeavour to turn their phones off in advance. Their are probably a 1001 ways that an individual can annoy/distract their opponent without suffering any penalty, let alone a default, under the rules. And frankly, leaving a phone on, on the off chance that somebody rings them at an advantageously critical moment, is probably a rather inefficient way of seeking an unfair advantage.

I would suggest that the percentage of players who deliberately leave their phone active in order to gain an advantage by its ringing is somewhere not far north and not far south of 0%. If ever there was a circumstance designed for the realms of 'etiquette' this is it.

Mike Truran · Post by **Mike Truran** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:28 pm

Alasdair - if you leave your phone on when having dinner with friends you don't get thrown out of the house before the main course if it goes off (well, not my friends anyway). For most people a local league game in the evening is similar to a night out with friends (although the mobile phone Nazis are no doubt of a different view).

Jonathan Bryant · Post by **Jonathan Bryant** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:31 pm

isaac wallis wrote:A warning then default won't work. People will just leave their phones on knowing they can get away with one call. Next round their phone will be on again.

According to you, then, phones should be going off constantly at Golden League given that there are usually two or even three matches held there for London League club nights. In fact they do not.

Carl Hibbard · Post by **Carl Hibbard** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 7:59 am

isaac wallis wrote:A warning then default won't work. People will just leave their phones on knowing they can get away with one call. Next round their phone will be on again.

At Kidlington (last year...) in the Major on board one with 3/3 I "somehow" managed to lean on the power button of my phone so that is switched itself on, it was one of those annoying Samsung ones that plays a small tune as it powers on - my opponent noticed and so did the guy on board two, the round had only just started but I had to leave the board to turn it off yet again...

Nobody said anything and the game continued BUT the question is should I have been defaulted?

E Michael White · Post by **E Michael White** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 8:24 am

Depends on what is stated on the entry form. If it states FIDE rules apply you should have been defaulted. To do otherwise brings the game into disrepute. In the situation you describe, if FIDE rules apply neither your opponent nor the arbiter has the option to let you off. If organisers want a different mobile phone rule it should say so on the entry conditions and then see if the number of entries decreases.

Carl Hibbard · Post by **Carl Hibbard** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 8:31 am

E Michael White wrote:Depends on what is stated on the entry form. If it states FIDE rules apply you should have been defaulted. To do otherwise brings the game into disrepute. In the situation you describe, if FIDE rules apply neither your opponent nor the arbiter has the option to let you off. If organisers want a different mobile phone rule it should say so on the entry conditions and then see if the number of entries decreases.

Hence my vote - the rule seems mean for what (in this incident...) was clearly nothing more than an accident

E Michael White · Post by **E Michael White** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 9:29 am

Carl

My previous response was not quite right owing to the distracting noise of crunching cornflakes.

If FIDE rules applied in the event you describe you did not need to be defaulted as the game was lost as soon as your phone made a noise. So in reality, as far as the chess legalities are concerned, you played on under false pretences, aided and abetted by the arbiter and your opponent !

Richard Bates · Post by **Richard Bates** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 9:31 am

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?

Carl Hibbard · Post by **Carl Hibbard** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 9:34 am

E Michael White wrote:If FIDE rules applied in the event you describe you did not need to be defaulted as the game was lost as soon as your phone made a noise. So in reality, as far as the chess legalities are concerned, you played on under false pretences, aided and abetted by the arbiter and your opponent !

Fair enough...

Can I add another option to the vote then:

"Lose some weight and then your jeans aren't tight enough to switch the mobile phone in your pocket on."

Alasdair Kirk · Post by **Alasdair Kirk** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 9:51 am

Mike Truran wrote:Alasdair - if you leave your phone on when having dinner with friends you don't get thrown out of the house before the main course if it goes off (well, not my friends anyway). For most people a local league game in the evening is similar to a night out with friends (although the mobile phone Nazis are no doubt of a different view).

May depend on the dinner - I am often at formal dinners in London - there you might well be thrown out

with friends probably not...
but I guess my comment was more about attitude / expectation - i.e. I am used to turning my phone off in a wide range of settings - who goes into a chess match without automatically turning it off?

Organisers - notice saying phones off
Players - turn them off
else...

simple

of course - less formal chess - do as you will!

Alasdair

Mike Truran · Post by **Mike Truran** » Sat Mar 06, 2010 10:13 am

What's so difficult about this?

(a) Most local leagues are indeed less formal chess. We're not talking about formal FIDE tournaments and matches, which may indeed merit draconian rules. They're about people meeting together in a more or less social environment for an evening's game of chess and maybe a pint together afterwards.
(b) In local league chess it's not about the cheating - as others have pointed out on this thread, there are lots of easier ways to cheat (at its simplest, you could walk out of the room for a few minutes, make a call and nobody would be any the wiser). And when was somebody last caught cheating with a mobile phone in a local league match? It's really about the noise.
(c) If it's really about the noise, why not introduce the same rule for all of the other, in most cases far more distracting, sources of noise in local league chess?

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Mobile phone penalties.

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