Post
by John Saunders » Tue Mar 09, 2010 1:48 pm
To answer Martin's original question (and, like him, not wanting to get too embroiled in another boring debate about the merits of this form of game-finish), I shall admit to being an adjudicator for both the Surrey League and Civil Service League from the late 1980s for about ten years or so.
I used to spend an enormous amount of time on adjudication positions. Being a bachelor for most of that time, with no 'husbandly duties' to perform, I could spare the time. I seem to recall that the positions for adjudication typically arrived on the doormat on a Friday or Saturday and it was not unusual to spend the best part of the weekend on them. I wouldn't have done that had I not enjoyed analysing chess positions (I've not played much correspondence chess but it has occurred to me that I might have been temperamentally suited to it). I used a computer to some extent (though they weren't much good until the late 1990s) but usually only to work out any tactical sequences. 99% of the time the positions were way too difficult to simply entrust to a computer (and I think that would still be true today, despite the increased strength of analysis engines). The point is that players and captains resolve all the easily-soluble positions amongst themselves without reference to an adjudicator, so the only positions you get to see are going to be very complex, or on a knife-edge as regards a resultant endgame (where an analysis engine is often of little use). Usually it was a matter of working one's way through all the plausible options and keeping a careful record of one's conclusions.
I certainly used a computer to assemble all the analysis, and would go back and check it rigorously, much in the same way, I guess, as a keen correspondence player would do with their own games. My strength at that time was around 190-200.
I'm a bit vague about how I got into being an adjudicator in the first instance, but it might have been to do with a time when I received an incorrect adjudication result from the Surrey League. I set to work to produce an appeal, spent a long time doing so and was successful in overturning the verdict. - something that nobody from my club had managed to do in my time. It is possible that the Surrey powers-that-were recruited me shortly after that. I have also acted as an appeal adjudicator and been instrumental in having a verdict of a fellow adjudicator overturned.
I think I have already retailed the story on the forum of the time when I opened an issue of CHESS to read an article by Chris Dunworth castigating the incompetence of adjudicators. He gave an example of what he thought was a bad decision and, to my horror, I recognised it as one which I myself had adjudicated. Obviously, as adjudicator, I was not told the identities of the two players, but it turned out they were Chris Dunworth and Peter Kemp. Chris had claimed a win but I had given him a loss. He wrote up his analysis in the article and of course I checked it against my own analysis of the position. He had failed to consider a much better alternative by his opponent on the first move so all his analysis was worthless! I asked Malcolm Pein for the right of reply but Peter Kemp must have done the same thing as CHESS published Peter's analysis, which completely accorded with mine and utterly refuted Chris's version. Chris, incidentally, appealed against my verdict but was not successful.
I was mightily surprised to read Matthew's comment about the ECF panel of adjudicators. I would regard all those names to be worthy of being on the panel despite their current grades. As Peter Rhodes says, their grades do not reflect their chess understanding. Once freed from the tyranny of the chess clock and the other petty irritations of practical play, I'm quite sure any or all of them are perfectly capable of giving accurate verdicts on adjudication positions.
