Mobile Phones (and Grandmasters)

[Nigel_Davies]

On the general issue, I wonder if a lot of people don't realise that the alarm on your mobile can go off even when the mobile itself is turned off. I do think that penalising people who have taken precautions is not really what was intended when rules were created to penalise people who didn't. It's not as hard to turn off a phone as some people tend to think (though perhaps it helps that I worked for years as a librarian and therefore got accustomed to turning the thing off) but do we really want to default people who've done that?

This appears to be what my mobile did, it woke itself up to announce that it was running short of battery power. I actually wonder what innovations may be next, a secret secondary battery perhaps? In my own mind mobile phones have now joined the category of Arnie in Terminator 1; one must make very sure that they're dead.

[Matthew Turner]

Having briefly read some of the comments I think I must restate that I believe Nigel Davies behaved impeccably throughout.
I may be wrong, but I believe when Nigel left the board to find an arbiter he believed that he had lost, otherwise why leave his clock running, he was perfectly entitled to stop it. What I don't understand is why Nigel had "technically not lost" and I would be grateful if an arbiter is able to explain this to us. I believe had Lorin's phone beeped whilst he was playing a Grandmaster then he would have lost and it is this kind of inconsistency that gives arbiters (perhaps, particularly British arbiters?) a bad name.

[Martin Benjamin]

Playing in a club match (I was part of the away team) recently, the first hour of the match had been conducted to the backdrop of numerous conversations conducted in stage whispers, recurring coughs, the rasp of the loud automatic hand dryer in the adjacent lavatories, not to mention the chatter of youngsters playing outside, along with the irrhythmic thud of a basketball against a wall. No one passed any comment. However, when a mobile issued a far quieter and more mellifluous tone for no more than a few seconds before it was switched off (belonging to a player whose game had finished), the looks from certain players verged on the Medusan, coupled with some barbed invective. How have we reached such a strange state of events? I may be a mediocre ECF 170-180 player with too much of a naive view about playing chess for enjoyment, but surely it would have been more sensible not to have written a specific law about mobile phones into the "Laws of Chess" and to have relied on the existing laws, together with those old standbys - common sense, sportsmanship and (if those fail) the arbiter?

[Carl Hibbard]

The problem is you cannot really call say a low battery beep or an arriving text beep (possible outside assistance) can you?

A noise has to be a default, no other choice there...

[Nigel_Davies]

Having briefly read some of the comments I think I must restate that I believe Nigel Davies behaved impeccably throughout.
I may be wrong, but I believe when Nigel left the board to find an arbiter he believed that he had lost, otherwise why leave his clock running, he was perfectly entitled to stop it. What I don't understand is why Nigel had "technically not lost" and I would be grateful if an arbiter is able to explain this to us. I believe had Lorin's phone beeped whilst he was playing a Grandmaster then he would have lost and it is this kind of inconsistency that gives arbiters (perhaps, particularly British arbiters?) a bad name.

I'd have thought that stopping the clock might imply resignation rather than leaving the board with my clock running.

BTW, and for the record, had Lorin's phone beeped I would not have made any claim, and in fact I would have made representations on his behalf to allow him to continue should this be under threat. This is because of my personal belief that games should be decided by chess moves and that the rules should serve this purpose rather than mitigate against it.

This of course does not provide an answer as to the 'legal' situation, but there are those who are better equipped than me to answer.

[JustinHorton]

Martin - a lot of people agree with that. I don't, for a few reasons. One is that mobile phones do tend to go off all the time unless you do something drastic and it really was necessary to do something about them - and unlike other noises (last Saturday, I played in a room above a wedding party) it's possible to do something about it. Hence the difference - if another of the players had been bouncing the basketball against the wall while his opponent was thinking, I think that might have drawn similar comment.

I also find that I'd much rather there was a rule we can stick to, because where that doesn't happen ,the opponent of the transgressing player tends to be put in an awkward position that is not of their making. If they claim the game, they're the bad guy. But if they don't, not only do they risk letting down their team, but they also find themselves in a changed psychological position where all the pressure is on them and off their opponent. And I don't think that's fair. It's not fair to put the onus on the entirely innocent party.

[Matthew Turner]

Nigel,
I don't dispute that you would have not claimed a win had Lorin's phone beeped and that you would in fact have made representations on his behalf. However, having said all this I still the result would have been a loss for Lorin (only my opinion).

[Ben Purton]

Id have stopped the clocks and insisted on the win. When you play for a team its a dog eat dog game. I don't think that taking the win makes me a bad person.

Ben

[JustinHorton]

Anyway, who was the GM whose phone wasn't his?

[Ben Purton]

Dont know , will it drive you insane if you dont know for once?

[JustinHorton]

No, chess has already performed that service for me. Chess and internet discussions.

[Ben Purton]

For me its women and drink but everyone has their own lusts.

[Nigel_Davies]

Nigel,
I don't dispute that you would have not claimed a win had Lorin's phone beeped and that you would in fact have made representations on his behalf. However, having said all this I still the result would have been a loss for Lorin (only my opinion).

And if I'd have refused to sign the scoresheet? In any case it would be useful to have expert guidance on this matter before speculating; I personally believe such rulings would be made evenhandedly.

Id have stopped the clocks and insisted on the win. When you play for a team its a dog eat dog game. I don't think that taking the win makes me a bad person.

Ben

No it wouldn't make you a bad person, but in the long run you might be better off not doing this for psychological reasons. When players lose their focus on the moves and the dignity of our game they diminish their warrior spirit.

[Ben Purton]

psychological reasons . I don't really get what your saying, your saying its better for me psychologically to not claim a win if a phone goes off?

[Nigel_Davies]

psychological reasons . I don't really get what your saying, your saying its better for me psychologically to not claim a win if a phone goes off?

Yes, it's a bushido thing.