English Chess Forum

Mobile phone ringing during a game.

Recently had a league match where an opponent’s mobile phone rang while he had a totally winning position. 2 moves away from forcing checkmate and the young student’s mobile ringer went off loudly. The player protested that he shouldn’t lose the game due it being checkmate. He was politely informed that technically the game was still in progress and thus this board is now lost (unless his opponent had insufficient material to win in which case it would be a draw)

This is a pretty drastic example of great timing by the device to snatch a win from the jaws of defeat. Any other interesting stories regarding mobile phone interruptions in matches?

I was once arbiting at a congress and a player's mobile phone went off, so naturally I awarded the game to his opponent. As it happened, the opponent in question was wearing industrial-strength ear defenders and was thus the only player in the room who didn't hear the phone go off.

Kevin O'Rourke wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 07, 2017 3:28 pm

He was politely informed that technically the game was still in progress and thus this board is now lost (unless his opponent had insufficient material to win in which case it would be a draw)

This is not quite the case. Even if there is "insufficient material", or more accurately, the player cannot win by a series of legal moves, then it is still a loss. This is because the assumption is that the reason for the phone being there is to be used as a device to aid that player with cheating, and so the player may have cheated earlier in it; and so they should lose, rather than draw.

At one British Rapidplay Championship, a clubmate of mine mislaid his mobile phone. He was so concerned about it that he even got the organisers to make an announcement before the start of the next round, asking everyone to look out for it. Later, between rounds, he found he'd merely left it in his car and so, very relieved, put it straight in his pocket. During his next game - it went off. Ironically, it was his wife wanting to know how he was getting on in the chess tournament. "Well, honey, I had been leading my section...".

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 07, 2017 4:40 pm

This is because the assumption is that the reason for the phone being there is to be used as a device to aid that player with cheating, and so the player may have cheated earlier in it; and so they should lose, rather than draw.

Which is of course entirely stupid. I would say that a phone ringing is almost conclusive evidence that the player has not been cheating, since if he had been he would have taken the basic precaution of making sure that it didn't go off.

I still support the rule, because I remember the days before it was introduced, when it sometimes felt as though tournaments were taking place in an amusement arcade. In my opinion the rule belongs in the sections about distracting the opponent and generally causing a nuisance.

At the awful Dresden Olympiad, one of the African teams was billeted out in the suburbs and their second board cut his journey to the playing hall a bit fine. Something went wrong with the tram, so a couple of minutes after the starting time he phoned his top board to report that he would be in breach of the new zero tolerance regulations...

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 08, 2017 11:10 pm

Something went wrong with the tram, so a couple of minutes after the starting time he phoned his top board to report that he would be in breach of the new zero tolerance regulations...

Which one might also think is entirely stupid, since the top board would have been painfully aware of this transgression by that point.