Can a TD do that. I thought they weren’t supposed to interfere.
It is so tempting to do that when you are hopelessly losing!
Sometimes your opponent’s attitude is annoying.
I detest playing against people that act like you suck. I guess because most times they beat me. 
It’s a stretch, but I suppose you could justify it under 20G, or possibly 20H1. Some tournaments include a supplemental rule like “TD reserves the right to adjudicate ridiculous positions,” which would cover it.
Without a supplemental rule, it’s a VERY big stretch, and very poor form. The kids play a very fast time limit. You are not even delaying the pairings waiting those few minutes. If the player down five queens doesn’t want to play, he could resign. Unfortunately, we all teach the kids never to resign. That could be a mistake.
I’ve seen a grandmaster up gobs of material, laugh at his 1900 opponent during a game. The 1900 won.
Never interfere unless asked. The exceptions are extremely rare.
All the best, Joe
I was referring specifically to the case Polly described, in which a player with only one legal move and facing a forced mate in 2 was refusing to move and running out his time. What he was doing was clearly unethical, but it requires some creative reading of the rules to get to “illegal.” Anything less egregious than this and I would not even consider intervening.
My misreading…excuse me.
My misreading…excuse me.
My misreading…excuse me.
What I tell you three times is true.
I’m having trouble posting…every time it comes up three times. I forgot to delete them this time.
Joe
I specifically complained to the TD about my opponent’s stalling. The TD told the opponent what he was doing was highly unsportsmanlike and gave me the win. He had around 2 hours left.
I agree. If a position is hopeless, but the person is sitting at the board pondering the position, then the game needs to be played on.
I don’t understand what the fuss is about, if you know you have a won position, let the oppenent do whatever he wants with his time, most tournaments are not going to start the next round until all the games of the current round are complete, and if it is just your oppenents time running the game will still be over before most. I agree that it is childish not to resign if you know you are lost say mate in one, but who cares let them be childish, it will still be a win in your column in the end. I have had people get upset with me for not resigning being down a queen, but in some of those games I have come back and won, we all make mistakes and the loser is generally the person that makes the last mistake.
If a player is actively searching desperately for a way out of a predicament then I leave the player alone no matter how futile I feel the search is.
If a player is just letting the clock run out (and the opponent gets the TD) then I’ve found that merely explaining 18G1 (adjudicating an essentially abandoned game, including cases when the player is actually present) is often enough to get a player to either resign or to play the forced move(s). I’d estimate that I only have to actually do something under 18G1 in less than 2% of the situations where it is applicable.
What if it’s after midnight, there’s an hour left on the clock, and the next game is at 9 am? Are you really saying that someone should be allowed to wait an hour to make the only legal move on the board and take away an hour of their opponent’s sleeping time? What about situations where there’s limited time to grab food between rounds?
I can understand fighting on from a losing position. But when the player’s truly just stalling, not actually searching for a way out of the bad situation, then that’s just poor sportsmanship.
In my situation is was after 10:00 pm and I had friends waiting for me to grab a quick bite before going to sleep. Yes the next round was 9:00 am Monday morning.
When a message is posted three times with the same person posting it each time, the other poster has the right to claim a draw.
Bob
Normally if a person is taking a long time to make a move, in a hopelessly lost position or otherwise, I get up and watch the other games or use the bathroom, or whatever. That way your opponent can take as long as he wants and you can always check your board every few minutes or so to see if he made a move. In a situation where sleep time is an issue, then I might talk to the TD.
One time one of my opponents had a losing position, but tried stalling. He knew exactly what he was doing, and his psychological warfare almost paid off.
When I got down to B + 2 widely separated pawns against lone K, he leaned across the table and said “I know I’m going to lose this game, but I’m going to look at some of the other games before I move.” He obviously didn’t want me to claim that he had abandoned the game. “I’m going to lose” is not exactly the same as resigning, is it? I’ve never said to an opponent that they should resign, but in this case I answered “If you know that you’re going to lose, you could resign” but he just said back “I don’t want to do that”. So he wandered for 10 or 15 minutes, then came back and made one move. I tried to understand his behavior, and thought that maybe his father would beat him, or at least disown him, if he lost, and he was just trying to delay the inevitable (He was high-school age). Apparently that wasn’t the case, because he didn’t appear nervous through the whole rest of the game.
It took a few more moves to Q a P, and then just a few more to mate, but on every one of his moves he would literally twiddle his thumbs and look around the room for about 5 minutes before turning his attention back to our board and moving quickly. I did complain to the TD, but he ruled that the game had to continue, because 1. my opponent had not abandoned the game, and 2. his moves were not exactly forced. He had some small but pointless choices to make before the mate.
The result is that we wasted over 1 hour of time that could have been better spent going out for food, or enjoying other games, or resting, but I was forced to stay near my board. I got so annoyed that my technique started to unravel. I did use 3 more moves to reach mate than it should have taken in that simple position. Also, the poor way that I played the last few, it was dangerously close to stalemate. At least I eventually won.
I’ve experienced this twice myself. Both times I had a mate in one, and both times the players got up and wandered around the room rather than making the forced move on the board. In one case I waited nearly an hour before the opponent finally played the only legal move he had. Happily, I had an hour on my clock too, so I still had time to unwind and get lunch afterwards.
Obviously, this is unsportsmanlike, but there may not be much to be done in the moment.
I wonder, though, if a TD has documented several cases of this sort of unsportsmanlike behavior, can the TD issue a warning to the effect of “If this sort of stalling behavior is observed again, you will not be permitted to enter future events” or some such? Is that a legitimate reason to exclude such a player?
I wonder if the oppopsite has ever happen, were a person has a mate in one and has sat there and let his clock run to see if his oppenent would resign?