What is the proper response from the TDs when 2 players play a complete game of tournament chess with the wrong colors? Do we just switch colors in the tournament software for the players and award the winning player with the color he or she actually played? Do we leave the colors alone and award the winner as if he or she played the right color? Switching colors may mess up the color sequences requirements of 2 or more players, correct? What is proper here based on the rules of USCF tournament chess? The rule book doesn’t provide an answer.
Adjust the software to reflect reality.
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This also highlights the challenges in trying to ‘check’ pairings after the fact from the crosstable, because one might look at the crosstable and ask “Why did the TD assign colors that way?”, when the answer is “The TD didn’t”, but there’s no way to indicate that.
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Yes, the answer to the question “why did I get assigned black three times in a row” has been “you didn’t. You got assigned black white black and just misplayed it.” more times than I care to think about.
My favorite getting multiple blacks in a row question was one I witnessed at the 1990 US Open. That was the year they were playing the US Championship knockout rounds in the day and the US Open at night.
One of the players (Dzindzi, if I remember correctly) came into the TD room shortly after the pairings for that evening’s US Open round went up, complaining that he was getting two blacks in a row.
The TD (Ira Lee Riddle) pointed out that he had White yesterday and Black tonight, but Dzindzi says, “No–you give me black this morning and black again this evening.” (One in the US Championship, one in the US Open.)
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Folks are not so vocal if it is 3 Whites in a row.
About 15 years I saw one where one of the players was a bit late and did not look at pairings. Just sat down with their opponent and played the white side – should have had black. The TD made the change and next round sure enough the score group had only 2 with BWW – at least the BWWW was easy to pair as black in the 5th round.
This year a TD was calling out the pairings and made misspoke the colors – I suspected it was a mistake since I just played one of the players and it meant he got the same color twice.
I always double check things when I think I get the same color two times in a row - too easy to make a “binary” mistake.
Back when the National Open was six rounds, a few sharpies apparently cajoled their R1 opponents to play White rather than Black so they could get on a schedule to have White in R6. This was back in the days before US Chess collected color information so I was told to not fix the colors.
DoanFamily, if you did not fix the colors how did you account for the winner when it was black that won?
They filled the score sheet with “White” having won. The winner then came in to point out that he won, but had played Black.