David, I would have to say that David Spence sounds like a candidate for sainthood given the way he accommodated your late arrival. If the default time had been 1 hour (a la 4NCL) you would have arrived in time and lost 55 minutes on the closk. With the advertised British Championship default time of 30 minutes, you had already (1) "lost"; and (2) arrived 55 minutes late, but actually got given 20 minutes back! It seems very strange/quite wrong that you were better off with a 30 minute default time than a 60 minute one.David Haydon wrote:In response to comments about late arrivals to the british championship -
Last round, i was playing David Spence in the main championship (bd17). I Live in Thurrock (essex) , so its about an hour and 10 minutes drive to canterbury, but like everyday, i left early, around 11:30-12.00. On route to canterbury, a lorry caught fire on top of the dartford crossing, which held up my journey for another 2 hours. I phoned within the first hour, to let the ECF and arbiters know i was late, and for them also to report this problem to my opponent, and to let him decide what he wanted to do.
My game was due to start at 2.15 PM , but i arrived at 3:10 PM. and sportingly, David Spence agreed to play the game. he mentioned nothing about claiming the game, even though it was well within his right for him to do so. and the arbiters even added a further 20 minutes to my clock, so i was only 30 or so minutes down at this time, Dave kindly was not at all worried by this.
I ended up winning the game, but at no time did spence blame me or complain about losing, it just shows he is a real chessplayer, and a true sporting gentleman.
now after being on the road for over 3 hours, the money i had spent (approximately £40 a round) , the day i had off work, i would have been pretty cheesed off if i had been defaulted.
In reflect i would have done exactly the same as to what Spence sportingly did for me - not claiming the game. because this would show how shallow the person is, im brought to a chess board, not to claim a game, but to play it regardless of the situations, true some reasons are not justifiable, but the ones that are should be given some leeway.
Its a shame that so many chess players out there are not willing to play chess, but point grab off one other, no wonder why there are so many sad chess players out there, claiming win from defaults is not a way to make friends, and it certainly is not associated with chess, but rather plain human Stupidity and ignorance.
at the end of the day any real chess player would be more satisfied with winning a game of chess, rather than winning by default. i would only claim the game, if it was really the only option.
David.
However sporting or not I may be, I can safely say that if I had been your opponent and the arbiters had behaved like that, I would have been very upset.
