One area in which experienced TDs often disagree is what penalties should be imposed to attempted cheaters. Because the circumstances can be varied so are the penalties directors impose.
I, as section chief, recently had a player lie to me about an unposted result. Without the presence of the opponent took his word. Shortly after the next round comenced it was brought to my attention that the result was wrong. I had both players pause the clock and discuss it outside the playing room. Both insisted they won. Upon further investigation including a witness playing at the neighboring board, I was certain who won.
Before imposing a penalty I informed the chief TD of my intended penalty. My intent was to give the attempted cheater a next round forfeit loss (0 point bye). My logic was that if I only scolded him, he would be in the same tournament situation as if I had done nothing. To me it also sends a message that trying to cheat will not harm his prize chances. I was overruled and told to give the player a severe scolding which I did. The chief TD told me that my penalty would be “too harsh”.
Sometimes directors consider the age of the offender prior to determining a penalty. In this case the offender was about 14-years-old and the intended victim about 9. I took an informal poll of the other TDs at the event and opinion seemed to be split about 50-50.
My questions are: 1) what is an appropriate penalty? and 2) should there be some guidelines in the rulebook?
In my opinion, you were too lenient. As soon as I was certain the player had lied about the result, that player would have been ejected from the tournament. I have had to deal with a similar situation in a scholastic team tournament, although in that case the player in question tried to kick me.
I am inclined to agree with Ken. However, it should be noted that as a result of his attempted cheating the offender was paired as if he had won that round and thus got a stronger opponent than he would have otherwise. So he did have some consequences for cheating, assuming it wasn’t a round robin. Meanwhile, his intended victim got an easier pairing as compensation.
I am assuming that the round wasn’t re-paired, of course. That isn’t implicitly stated.
My automatic response to any cheating I’ve ever uncovered is immediate ejection from the tournament, with no compensation of any kind. YMMV. (I certainly understand those who may say that is too harsh. IMHO, the field deserves protection from any sort of cheating. Such a response is the strongest signal a TD/organizer can send to players in affirmation of that protection, which is why I utilize it.)
As long as one uses judgment as to what is “cheating”, I can buy this. Technically any rules violation is “cheating”, but you’re not going to kick a player out for making an illegal move. You’ll apply the penalty given in the rules. But a couple of grayer examples:
A player touches his piece, then decides he needs more thought. He thinks for another 15 minutes, forgetting he had touched a piece. He then attempts to make another move. You aren’t going to kick him out for that.
This situation actually happened last weekend in a team event. In the K-1 section, a player lost his game and it was recorded as such. However, between rounds he told his father in the presence of his teammates he had won. The father checked with the TD staff, but the result slips were initialed by both players and signed by the TD. The result wasn’t changed. In the next round, the exact same thing happened. Does this look like the kid is trying to cheat? Not sure? Well, another staffer, a mom, talked to the kid after the second occurrence. Eventually he broke down and confessed. It seems on the way to the tournament he admired a classic car and his father said “If you go 5-0 today I’ll get you a car like that when you turn 16”. Are you going to toss this repeat offender out? I might want to horsewhip the father…
We recently had a situation at a scholastic tournament where a player changed a posted result on the pairing sheet. His opponent noted the change and brought it to the attention of the TDs. We looked at the sheet and could see erasure marks. We also asked to see her scoresheet, which had 1-0 marked and a # symbol by her last move. The team coaches were notified. At first an assistant coach tried to defend the boy, but he could not produce a scoresheet. When the head coach saw the girl’s scoresheet and the #, he was mortified and asked us to withdraw the boy from the event. His worst punishment was that he had to explain to his mom later that day what he had done. He was allowed to play in the next day’s one day tournament, but with a note to that section’s TD about the incident. We did not want him to be penalized further but given an opportunity to show that he learned the lesson. Both coaches were satisfied with the result and how it was handled.
I was operating under the apparent misconception that the distinction between a basic rules violation (touch move, etc.) and actual cheating (as described by Mr. Stenzel upthread) was sufficiently clear. I was also operating under the misconception that I might be given at least minimal credit for understanding this. My apologies for both operating errors.
I should note that the gray areas raised by Mr. Mulford are not all that gray - at least, to my limited understanding. In the first, that would only be an issue beyond typical touch-move penalties if it was a repeated problem with the same player. In the second, the player has not cheated, because no fraudulent result was actually submitted (or changed). The situation as described is a private matter, and outside my purview as a director.
In the first case, it is quite legitimately possible that the player may have forgotten he had touched a piece. If that is an attempt at cheating, it’s an expensive attempt with respect to time on the clock. If the opponent makes a claim, the standard two minute penalty is completely adequate to handle this situation.
The second situation is interesting. My opinion is the same as Mr. Reed’s. However, this situation happened in a K-1 section. With players so young, a “one size fits all” principle might not, in fact, fit all. I would let the player continue in the tournament. As Kenneth Sloan has observed, directing K-1 sections often presents much different challenges to the director than the director may be accustomed to resolving.
Additional information: The round was not re-paired as it was only after the next round had started that I learned of the dispute and probably at least another 45+ minutes after talking to the players in the hall that I was able to find the witness. I was about 95% sure who the cheater was before I talked to the witness based on their behavior. When I scolded the cheater before the next round he continued to maintain that he won until I informed him about the witness who described the players and game with more detail than I expected. Also, I learned after the tournament ended that the cheater had also lied about not keeping a scoresheet. As luck would have it, when the tournament ended he left his chess bag behind including a scorebook. I looked to see whose it was and saw that he started the scoresheet with the first several moves of the game stopping about 3 moves after he blundered a full queen.
I’m not inclined, if left to make my own decision, to eject on the first offense but make sure he didn’t get away with it as a “0F” would accomplish. I have a good memory and a second similar offense would be likely to be met with ejection and possibly an ethics complaint no matter how many years later it occurred. I’m much more interested in stopping the cheating than stopping the player from playing.
Removal from the event without refund, rated loss in the ongoing second round game, and an Ethics Committee referral. This is not a hard call, in my view.
Candidly, I still think referring the player to Ethics is warranted.
A lot is left to our discretion as directors, but your chief was off base here.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear on what I meant by “0F”. My planned penalty was not to pair the cheater in the next round there by giving him the rated loss he deserved in the first round and another zero in the third round. In doing so I would have also left him in the situation of having to explain to his friends and family why he didn’t get paired.
Harold, you are being too kind. Your chief TD undermined your authority. The offender should have received the penalty you described at the very least. I would have wanted the 14 year old removed from the tournament for trying to cheat a 9 year old. On top of that, the kid continued to lie to you. That clearly warrants further penalties. This is probably not the first time he did that; he should be stopped in his tracks. His coach and parents should have been informed of his behavior as well.
Another individual needs further sanctions. The Chief TD, for making an atrocious overrule of your original decision, should be referred for disciplinary action. By not supporting his assistant TDs and allowing a cheater to remain in the tournament he threatens the integrity of future tournaments in your region.
I didn’t know about the lie about the scoresheet until after the tournament was over.
It’s the first time I know of so I made no assumptions of prior attempts. I was more concerned about taking measures to discourage future attempts.
I spoke to his mother and she already knew about it and was disappointed about his behavior. I don’t what she did to punish her son, if anything.
I must disagree with the above statement. It’s a judgement call and we judged the appropriate penalty differently. A TD should not be punished for having a difference of opinion. I asked the question in my initial post about having penalty guidelines in the rulebook. So far no poster has addressed this issue. Perhaps if there were some minimum and maximum penalty guidelines there would also be some consistency between TDs.
It will never be possible to attain absolute consistency among TDs, especially in gray areas.
But IMHO a chief TD should not overrule his associate TDs as long as the associate’s ruling is within the reasonable range of possible rulings. The chief should overrule only in the case of clear error.
Let me make it clear that I was not trying to undercut the chief TD. I was seeking affirmation that my proposed penalty was not unreasonable nor too harsh. I believe the chief TD should have the final decision. That is why I spoke to him before making a decision on the penalty.
If there were penalty guidelines then perhaps future disagreements could be minimized.
Are you saying, Harold, that you did not actually make a ruling before consulting with the chief TD? That pretty much makes Bill’s view that the chief TD shouldn’t overrule their assistants except in case of clear error inapplicable to this situation. Those who want to string up the chief TD will need to wait for another opportunity.
In football, a cornerback who is beaten deep might grab the receiver. A pass interference penalty - even a long one - is better than an easy 6 points.
In golf, if you accidentally make your ball move, you’re supposed to be honorable and asses yourself a stroke.
Clearly too different approaches - pragmatic versus honor bound. (Now, I would argue that football also has an honor approach - not to injure the opponent knowingly.)