Adjourned games should not be rated?

General discussions about ratings.
Graham Borrowdale

Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Graham Borrowdale » Fri Oct 02, 2009 11:39 pm

John, you have not told us whether you remained calm enough to survive until the adjournmant..

If you are the away player you discount one of the 3 options and the home player chooses from the remaining 2. Seemed to work quite well when I played, with most players choosing QPF. However, the League does have its fair share of players who will win a pawn and then not play beyond move 30...

James Coleman
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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by James Coleman » Fri Oct 02, 2009 11:53 pm

I also played in that league for quite a few years, from numerous casual chats with opponents after the games I established that in almost 100% of cases, when they offer you two options, the one they say first is the one they really want. Just so you know...

Scott Freeman
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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Scott Freeman » Sat Oct 03, 2009 1:55 pm

To explain for John Upham, the history of the system used in the Surrey League goes back to when I as the Coulsdon rep proposed mandatory quick play finishes. I was SCCA Secretary at the time and had typed myself the letter well before the 3 weeks required for submissions. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of leaving an automated date on the letter which meant that when I printed it to be sent out to the clubs, the date was beyond the deadline for submissions and the President at the time (who incidentally was anti-quick play finishes) then , after receiving complaints from others of like mind, ruled the motion illegal at the meeting. Of course he never gave me prior notice that he was going to do this. I could have corrected the letter had I been told. :oops:

I was about to resign there and then but Mike Gunn (later to be appointed President) suggested this idea we have now. Basically the away player offers 2 of the 3 end game options (QP, Adjudication or Adjournment) and the home player choses 1 of them (knowing that he must travel if he takes adjournment). I thought this was a good compromise for the time (10 years ago) and proposed it to everyone as a step forward, albeit I felt that quickplay should come in as the default.

The idea was voted through the following year but because 1 person hadn't received the AGM notice (who was anti QP) due to my error in sending emails, I was violently attacked by him and another player from another club who still seems to resent me as a result! They proposed a rule change back and succeeded, but not by the deadline that was required for the rules for the new season, which went ahead with the new system in place despite certain clubs trying to persuade people to play under the old rules, which gave adjudication as the default.

An EGM was called mid-season to "discuss" the proposed return to the old system but for the most part, only those who wanted to revert back attended. When the next meeting came around that summer, the new rules were voted back in, overturning the overturning the previous year (are you with me? :lol:).

A survey had been arranged by the Constitution & Rules committee which those who opposed the changes didn't like the wording of. I didn't like them either but inevitably got blamed for it by certain individuals and was the target of a lot of abuse. In the end, I resigned because I had had enough, but am pleased that everything I claimed would be the case (which I was attacked on) was later proved right. I had claimed that about half the members wanted QP finish; the survey showed it. I claimed that the extra 10 minutes in the playing session would force more games to move 42 (instead of 35), thus leading to fewer adjudications. I was right. In fact once the new rules came in, there were hardly any problems, which rather made a pharse of the abuse I took.

Anyway, I do now feel that we need to move on. There will always be people who don't like QP finishes for various reasons. There will always be older or slower players who think they will be disadvantaged by it. They may be right, but I feel that at some point, we have got to take the bull by the horns and move forward. Adjudications (especially) and adjournments must go. They are unnecessary and often provide warped results that would not happen if games were started and finished in the same session by the players themselves. As Chris Dunworth once said to me, one evening is surely long enough for one game of chess!

I am not sure I would go as far as saying an adjourned game should not be rated (although I can certainly concur with the argument), but certainly I would say that for adjudications.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sat Oct 03, 2009 2:16 pm

The ECF directors could give a lead here (not that they will). Propose a motion to Council that as a minimum, league rules should allow a player to insist on playing to a finish on the night. It doesn't have to be quickplay, it could be increment or delay. The point being that adjournments and adjudications should be allowed only on the agreement of both players. In its weakest form the motion would just be recommended practice.


I could be wrong, but I get the impression that London and the south east are the last strongholds of adjudication and that adjournments also have disappeared from most of the country.

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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sat Oct 03, 2009 2:54 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote: I could be wrong, but I get the impression that London and the south east are the last strongholds of adjudication and that adjournments also have disappeared from most of the country.
The Birmingham League uses time controls of 30/75, then 24/60 until the game finishes. However, at the start of a season, teams can either opt to be adjournment/adjudication or quickplay finish. The default is adjournment/adjudication, if two quickplay finish teams play one another, then they use the quickplay finish. That takes the form of 30/75 then back 15. You can opt for other time limits, e.g. 36/90 then back 15, 42/105 then back 15.
shows which teams are adjournment or quickplay. The breakdown is interesting (quickplay finish first):
Division 1: 7-6
Division 2: 5-8
Division 3: 7-6
Division 4: 4-8
Division 5: 3-8
Division 6: 3-9
Total: 29-45

For an adjudication to take place, both players have to agree.

I was informed that one club, which fielded several teams, have pulled out of the Birmingham League due to the requirement for adjournments, so this data may well be skewed. However, it appears that some of the players in that team have now joined other clubs that play in the Birmingham League, which is unfathomable.

Richard Bates
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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Richard Bates » Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:58 pm

I would think that in the London League most people who have preference for quickplay over adjournment, take that position for convenience reasons. Basically they don't want to have to come back at a later date, when the social aspect will not be present, and when there is the chance that opponents will try to exploit that for advantage (eg. by not resigning in hopeless positions in the hope of securing a draw offer when the match result is not dependent on it).

There is no particular objection to adjournments on purely chess grounds, and no particular feeling that adjournments produce unfair or unjust outcomes (so certainly no reason why such games shouldn't be rated/graded). And as such I don't think the genuine views of those who do not feel physically able to fulfill the demands of playing quickplay finishes should be cast aside. In practice most opt for quickplay finishes so those who favour that can expect to be satisfied on most occasions.

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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:16 pm

Richard Bates wrote:There is no particular objection to adjournments on purely chess grounds
There is for me. It just becomes a battle of Fritz v Rybka. If you're a GM, that might not make much difference, but if a player graded ~ 100 suddenly reels off 10 moves of engine lines, it no longer becomes his ability, and becomes the ability of the computer program he went out and bought. Particularly if the opponent hasn't got an engine, which for older players is possible.

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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Richard Bates » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:23 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Richard Bates wrote:There is no particular objection to adjournments on purely chess grounds
There is for me. It just becomes a battle of Fritz v Rybka. If you're a GM, that might not make much difference, but if a player graded ~ 100 suddenly reels off 10 moves of engine lines, it no longer becomes his ability, and becomes the ability of the computer program he went out and bought. Particularly if the opponent hasn't got an engine, which for older players is possible.
I have never met a player graded 100 capable of "reeling off 10 moves of engine lines" against an opponent who will likely deviate from prepared analysis at a very early stage. In fact in many circumstances i would go as far as to back the individual who did their analysis the traditional way and ignored the computer. Having the computer will dramatically increase a player's strength for maybe a couple of moves on average, and the chances of the game being decided in that time are generally pretty small. You might as well say that anyone who doesn't use chessbase to prepare for games shouldn't bother playing in the first place.

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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Paul McKeown » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:36 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:The ECF directors could give a lead here (not that they will). Propose a motion to Council that as a minimum, league rules should allow a player to insist on playing to a finish on the night. It doesn't have to be quickplay, it could be increment or delay. The point being that adjournments and adjudications should be allowed only on the agreement of both players. In its weakest form the motion would just be recommended practice.
I agree, this sounds sensible.

I think that adjudicated games, though, should, in principle, NOT be graded. Neveretheless, the ECF graders should allow a few adjudicated games to be graded, where justified on a case by case basis. Such as for those few blind players in the London League(*) or, where adjudication had been used as a last resort in the case of force majeure, such as fire alarms, burst pipes, sudden inclement weather and the like. Or the two players who suddenly found themselves playing with the incorrect time control, that we discussed a while back.

(*) the London League caters for blind players, by allowing them to mandate adjudication. Who would want to force a blind player to scrabble around hopelessly in a quick play finish? It is possible that some mean and ill disposed individual might object to an adjudication in that case :roll: , but I think the collective will should be able to prevail in that case. I would hope that other leagues would also cater for the disabled with suitable inclusive exceptions.

Adjourned games, should, of course, remain graded. The players will, after all, have finished the game naturally, under rules accepted (and subsequently amended from time to time) by FIDE since its inception. I think that there should be no objection to two players adjourning a game, where both have consented, and where the team captains, league secretary and grader accept the extra work generated for them.

Roger is right, though, in my view, in saying that adjournments should only be acceptable where neither player would prefer a QPF or the use of increments or delay mode.

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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by John Saunders » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:42 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Richard Bates wrote:There is no particular objection to adjournments on purely chess grounds
There is for me. It just becomes a battle of Fritz v Rybka. If you're a GM, that might not make much difference, but if a player graded ~ 100 suddenly reels off 10 moves of engine lines, it no longer becomes his ability, and becomes the ability of the computer program he went out and bought. Particularly if the opponent hasn't got an engine, which for older players is possible.
Alex, I get the impression that you haven't much experience of adjournments. In practice it is very unusual to adjourn in the middle of a forcing line where computers can make a big difference. What happens considerably more frequently is that you prepare for the resumption only to find a position on the board a couple of moves in which you had not even considered.

Even before computers came in, weak players had strong friends who helped them with their adjournment analysis, particularly in team chess. Was that strictly fair? You might argue "no" but it was the norm which we all accepted. I still can't see too much wrong with it and I'm not convinced that the fact of adjournment has caused undue unfairness or injustice in many games. One upside of adjournment is that it allows sessions to be of a duration which are comfortable for all ages. Six and seven hour sessions without a break are arguably unfair to very young or very old players. Another upside is that it allows you to play a full game of chess, including the endgame. I think a lot of modern players are missing out on their chess education by not playing endgames at a sensible time limit. When I was a regular competition player I used to enjoy adjournments and I know plenty of others who would say the same.

Adjournment was good enough for all the world champions from Steinitz to Kasparov. I don't recall Fischer moaning about the unfairness of adjournment (he moaned about almost everything else!). When he adjourned his games against Spassky in 1972, he must have known he was up against the entirety of the Soviet Union's team of grandmasters working overnight to support Spassky, but he accepted it - and won. I hope nobody is going to try and convince me that Rybka is stronger than the massed ranks of Soviet GMs in 1972...
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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:57 pm

I don't see how there is a difference between someone walking up to the board and whispering suggestions in your ear, which is outlawed, and someone going home and putting the game on their computer for a few minutes and spending an hour learning the key lines. As far as I'm concerned, they're both cases of receiving external assistance during the game, which is not something I personally am a fan of. It doesn't matter to me if that's the accepted norm. Before a game, i.e. looking in databases and preparing for a particular opponent is fair enough, because the game is not in progress.

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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Richard Bates » Sat Oct 03, 2009 5:10 pm

Throw your computer in the bin Alex. It might do wonders for your playing strength. :shock:

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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sat Oct 03, 2009 5:19 pm

Thanks for that. :?

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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Paul McKeown » Sat Oct 03, 2009 5:21 pm

Thought I should through in a "Ha Ha", there Alex.

Ha Ha!

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Re: Adjourned games should not be rated?

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sat Oct 03, 2009 5:24 pm

Ah well. We can't all be International Masters.

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