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Among all tournament chess games where one player is late for the start, what are the percentage chances that the late player will eventually arrive before time forfeit (the point when his clock has ticked away 60 minutes)?
Ideally I would like the answer in the form of a simple graph, with the vertical y-axis being %percent (0 to 100) chance of arrival before forfeit, and the horizontal x-axis being minutes (1 to 60) to mark the time remaining until forfeit at 60 minutes.
The curve would begin at perhaps 98% above the 1 minute tickmark on the x-axis.
The curve would end at perhaps 1% above the 59 minutes tickmark.
What SHAPE is the curve in between those two x-axis extremes? Undoubtedly the curve would slope downward (left-to-right, from 1 minute to 60 minutes), but I doubt the curve would be a straight line.
Instead, I suspect the curve would concave, meaning it would be steeply sloped downward in the 1-10 minute range. But then the slope would become less steep until it becomes nearly level in the 50-59 minutes range.
Or, it might be more like an ‘S’ curve. If so, where on the x-axis would the inflexion points be?
I have long felt that the USCF rules are blameworthy for making a player-in-timely-attendance waste an hour of his life for the rude late or no-show player. 15 minutes is long enough, and that should be the forfeit mark. For example, the briefer forfeit deadline leaves enough time for the player to play the house’s extra player, as I can personally attest to.
The shape of the curve discussed above bears directly whether the forfeit mark of 60 minutes is wise or optimal.
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I disagree, because sometimes players are stuck in traffic or have trouble finding the playing site. The default FIDE rule, on the other hand, is zero tolerance for lateness, which is closer to what you want. CCA has a rule that allows a player with a zero or minus score who is 30 minutes late to be removed from the pairings and another player substituted, which gives more flexibility for re-pairing a player whose opponent is late, although not as much as you’re asking for.
Sorry, I haven’t kept statistics on how often late plate players show up and how late they are. Sometimes late players show up right before the forfeit time - or right after!
This one line of thinking is used often when the debate over changing the one-hour tardy rule comes up at the Delegate’s meeting. The counter arguments regarding the use of our instant communication systems (AKA, with cell phones leading the charge) to let the TD know of any tardiness caused by traffic (etc.) have not moved the Delegates to change the rule, so far. The way around the one-hour forfeit rule is to announce your own version, and publicize it for your tournaments.
It would probably be a good idea to change the rule so that a TD, even without advance notice in pre-event publicity, would have the option, after 15 minutes, of changing the pairings for the late arrivers and their opponents.
For example, if players A and B are waiting for X and Y respectively, then after 15 minutes the TD could pair A vs B and X vs Y. This would be an especially good option if A and B are on nearby boards, with A being the higher-rated in his original pairing and B being the lower-rated in his.
If X or Y shows up later, either re-pair him (if feasible) or give him a half-point bye or a zero.
Instead of whining that he doesn’t have an opponent, the waiting player could do something useful like observing other games of potential opponents to see what openings they are playing, taking a snooze to rest his fevered brain, or even reviewing his opening notes to put some information into his short term memory.
A late opponent is usually rushed, not thinking straight, and prone to gross errors. Re-pairing is not usually possible except for large events with multiple no-shows. The present rule provides some slack for the player with an emergency or an unforeseen event that delays him. The waiting player is not being damaged very much, if at all. He may even be sadistically relishing watching the minutes disappearing from his opponent’s clock.
Here are some of the reasons I have seen for players who were late: job reasons, family obligations, church services running long, traffic snarls on an interstate, late flights because of storm delays, waiting in an emergency room for a doctor to inform him of his father’s condition, and the TD/organizer shifting the site of the tournament to another location and posting notice of this only on the club website on the morning of the event. Do you really think it is a good idea to destroy goodwill by punishing players for being late for reasons beyond their control?
I agree with the above. Bill’s “option” idea for a rule tweak is pretty good.
I disagree with the following, partly because its attitude is too unbalanced in favor of the tardy player, and is even dismissive or disrespectful of the legitimate concerns of this courteous on-time player:
A courteous player spends money on airfare, hotel, and his vacation time on a Las Vegas tournament, so he can play rated games of chess.
But then he is told he cannot be re-paired against some other courteous player whose opponent is also a no-show. Nor can he be re-paired against the odd numbered player for whom there was no opponent, nor against the available house player who solves the odd-numbered-player problem.
Instead he must waste an hour of his time, plus the whole round, just in case the tardy opponent might show up at the 37 minute mark.
Now that is “destroying goodwill” of the innocent player.
Being so late is not acceptable in other walks of life: being 37 minutes late to a meeting with a prospective customer; being 37 minutes late to pick up a young lady for a date. To me being 37 minutes late is not acceptable for a rated chess game.
And the tardy player does not even bother to send ahead a text message to the TD?
This debate is not a binary about Late vs NotLate. It is about where the stake in the ground was placed along a continuum.
60 minutes is too far from the start of the game, and the TD should, by default specified in the rule book, have the option to re-pair etc at the 15 minute mark.
TD’s should provide a phone number or other similar mechanism whereby tardy players can warn and inform those in attendance and on time.
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I sense a disconnect between the people who want to play Chess, and the people who want to compete for prizes.
If you look at a tournament as a competition for prize money, then the player whose opponent is a no show has lost nothing, and the rule is just fine. If, on the other hand, you assume that the player actually has as his top priority playing Chess, then the OP is spot on. The rule, as written, penalizes the person whose opponent no-shows.
Let me think like a bad guy here; i.e., I find out my pairing before I show up (create your own story for this part–friend at event, pairings by phone, pairings on-line, …). I don’t like my pairing. So, I don’t show up in the first fifteen minutes so I can get re-paired. Perhaps this new rule suggestion needs to address this bad guy action?
Tim was actually involved in one of the more famous late show-ups in Illinois, as an organizer and the director at one of our Prairie State Opens.
Following Helen Warren’s successful creation of the Midwest Masters (which eventually evolved into the U.S. Masters) - a tournament originally with the idea of bringing area very high experts and masters in contact with other masters to help such players improve and to create more masters - Tim and I developed the idea of the “Prairie State Open” which reached down to all experts in the Illinois - Wisconsin - Indiana - Iowa area along with area masters and up, and selected high “A” players - to feed the next tier of improving players.
One year the tournament happened to be held on the spring weekend that daylight savings time kicked in.
And indeed, in spite of announcements, two players, NM Ken Wallach, and his expert brother Cliff, were late for the Sunday morning round.
This was in the day of limited cell phone use, so we tried to reach them to no avail. But the tournament building was located at a college and was on the edge of the (large) college parking lot, so we kept vigil for them. As the time was nearing one hour late - we saw them walking in from the parking lot. I went out and yelled at them to hurry, their allotted hour was almost up. They raced into the playing room and both of their seats were on the far side of their respective tables. Ken reached across his table made his first move and pressed his clock, with his flag hanging at an hour (yes - analog clock days!) Cliff, unfortunately, chose to walk around the table instead of reaching across - and his flag fell just before he moved.
I thought the rule was that the player had to be “present”, not that he had to complete a move, within an hour. There’s no rule that says he has to be SITTING. If he were close enough to have moved from the wrong side, wouldn’t he have been “present”? After all, that was considered good enough for his brother, who made his move that way.
Not knowing what the time controls were or if they were played under the current version of the rules… But the current rule says, “arrives at the chessboard.” It also states, “A director who learns that a player is unavoidably delayed may waive the one-hour forfeit rule.”
As to the original post, there is nothing preventing a pre-announced rules change enacting any late period allowing a forfeit up to and including the default FIDE rule. The other disconnect I see is between long and short events. Having to wait an hour in a G/60 game is a little ludicrous… but having to wait an hour in a 6 hour game? Meh. Maybe patience should prevail. A better compromise might be half the round time or 60 minutes, whichever is less.
The TD’s response depends on how the TD perceives “arrives at the chessboard.” If a player is in the playing room, is that “arrival?” Exactly where is the missing player located when the one hour has passed is a key question.
I had a fun one once where the player arrived barely within the hour, saw somebody playing at the board, went to double-check the pairings, got the TDs to resolve somebody playing on the wrong board, and then we fixed the situation with the “interloper” being somebody from a different section sitting down at the wrong board. We ruled that the late player did arrive at the board within the hour, limited the time off his clock to that estimated arrival time, and the player sitting at the wrong board ended up still being able to play because his scheduled opponent did not have a clock and the rule for that tournament was that a forfeit could only be claimed after either one hour off the chess clock or after the entire amount of the first time control (for one player) after the start of the round in the absence of a clock.
Another time (same rules about lateness) neither player showed up within the hour. One showed up about 80 minutes late (still within the first time control), erroneously set the clock for the full time control, and waited until more than an hour had run off the clock before claiming a forfeit win. Technically the late player arrived early enough to claim the forfeit win, though under standard rules it could have been a double-forfeit.
There is another one that I heard about second hand. It is another example of how a TD interprets arrival at a board.
Two twenty-something players drove together to a tournament and requested that the TD not pair them together if that could be done reasonably. At the start of the final round they returned slightly late from a dinner break and one asked the TD right by the door what his pairing was, with the response being that he was paired against the kid. He sat down against the only kid without an opponent (he was about 14 years old) and his friend sat down against the only other player remaining. When they went to report their results they found out that they had actually been paired against each other and their opponents had also been paired against each other (one of those opponents was sitting at the wrong board).
They were a bit miffed to find out they had been paired that way but told the organizer that they would play their game at an appropriately reduced time control so that it would be played without delaying the event. The TD ruled that they could not play the game and would both be forfeited (including the player who was at the right board against the wrong opponent, and thus did not arrive on time versus his opponent). The appeals committee included players who would win more money with a double-forfeit and they upheld the TD.
This was before there were special referees that could be used instead of an appeals committee.
P.S. This is also a cautionary tale that a player (at least in an individual tournament rather than a team event) should always personally check the pairings and not take ANYbody’s word for it.