[i]The most prestigious international tournament in chess, at which the world’s top players compete alongside amateurs to win honours for their country, has ended on a sombre note after two players died suddenly within hours of each other, one while he was in the middle of a match.
Hundreds of spectators attending the 41st Chess Olympiad in Tromsø, Norway, and countless others watching live TV coverage on Norway’s state broadcaster, reacted with shock after Kurt Meier, 67, a Swiss-born member of the Seychelles team, collapsed on Thursday afternoon, during his final match of the marathon two-week contest. Despite immediate medical attention at the scene he died later in hospital.
Hours later, a player from Uzbekistan who has not yet been named was found dead in his hotel room in central Tromsø. Norwegian police and the event’s organisers said on Friday they were not treating the deaths as suspicious.
“We regard these as tragic but natural deaths,” said Jarle Heitmann, a spokesman for the Chess Olympiad. "When so many people are gathered for such a long time, these things can happen.[/i]
I had a teammate on the Seattle Chess Club team die during a match when I was in college. Our regular 4th board didn’t show up and he was pressed into service. His opponent went out for a smoke and found him collapsed over the board. Paramedics were unable to revive him. Needless to say the match was abandoned. My game was a clear win, so they declared my teammates a loss and the other two were declared draws. I had never met the man but I was a little wobbly for two days.
For those that attended the 1993 Missouri Open in Springfield, Missouri, I remember this event too well on what happened during the 1st round of
that event. I was matched up against Grandmaster, Gregory Kaidanov, and was holding my own as black for the first 20 some odd moves. The book store was situated towards the back of the ball room we were playing in, and when it was GM Kaidanov’s turn to move, we all heard a loud thump fall to the floor by the book store. I initially thought it was a book that fell off the table, but when I heard the book store manager yell out, “Someone Dial 911”, then all the games had to be stopped while the Springfield EMS worked on trying to revive this player who had blundered a piece in a much better position, and suffered a fatal heart attack. So the games naturally had to be stopped for an hour, and upon resumption, I promptly blundered a knight to the Grandmaster, and that is all she wrote.
As long as everybody is contributing gruesome stories, I might as well throw one in, from about 1970. During a tournament at a YMCA (not sure it’s still there) on South Wabash in Chicago, a friend and I were going over a game in the skittles room. We all felt and/or heard a vague thump, apparently coming from outside the building.
Next morning, I read in the newspaper that somebody had committed suicide by jumping from an upper-floor window in that building. I never did find out whether that was the thump, nor whether the person who took his own life was a chess player. But I don’t remember seeing any forfeits without notice (unannounced withdrawals) on the wall chart.
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? -
Edgar Allan Poe
I believe the forum rules say that it is prohibited to have a thread that does not involve a contentious rules discussion, so I must ask:
• If your opponent dies at the board, is that an immediate forfeit, or do you have to wait until his flag falls and claim a win on time?
Or would this be a situation where 18G applies, and the director can adjudicate the game? 18G1 says that a player with a poor position and a lot of time remaining who disappears for more than 15 minutes or “is present but shows little interest in considering the position” counts as an emergency, so it would seem 18G could be applied if the dead person was losing. But what if the dead person was winning…would there by justification then for adjudicating and giving the dead player the win?
In all seriousness, much like in baseball when the pitcher is told to throw a pitch to an improperly calling time out batter, it is automatically a strike, I believe 18G1 claims are always given as wins.
Technically, 18G1 says to adjudicate based on best play. The reason they are pretty much always given as wins is because they usually only get claimed when the losing player is subject to it (in a drawish position the opponent simply waits for the win from the flag).
18G. Adjudications.
Only under emergency circumstances may a director permanently adjudicate a game; that is, declare a result based upon best play by both sides. When used in other than emergency situations, this fact must be clearly specified in all tournament publicity and posted and announced at the site. See also 14G2, Players apparently unaware of situation; 14J, Draw declared by director; 16Y, Assisting players with time management prohibited; and 21D, Intervening in games.
18G1. Example of emergency.
An emergency situation could arise, for example, if a player with substantial time remaining and a poor position disappears for more than 15 minutes or is present but shows little interest in considering the position. Such behavior is unsportsmanlike and the director is encouraged to adjudicate, possibly after a warning. See also 1C2, Director discretion; 20H, Long absence during play; 21F, Player requests for rulings; and 21K, Use of director’s power.
In club play many years ago at the Cambridge (Mass.) YMCA. a player , non-smoker, died at the chessboard. His neighbor was in the men’s room. When they took the deceased away, they took his neighbor’s pipe also.
I am still bothered by this news, that perhaps lack of sleep could have been a cause for these deaths, and this is strictly my own hypothesis. I am not going to say that where the tournament was could have been a leading cause of lack of sleep, and given the environment of this tournament where it was daylight about 21 hours out of the day, could have contributed to lack of sleep, since most of us as probably the tournament competitors are used to sleeping in darkness, and it may have been the first time in most of the players’ lives of being in an unfamiliar environment where maybe they were averaging 4 or 5 hours of sleep at night because of the constant daylight.
I think from what I observed, the conditions in Tromso, Norway were very favorable as the general location included beautiful mountains and lakes, and the hospitality was outstanding to all the competitors that participated along with the numerous visitors. Perhaps most of the tournament participants may not have been adequately prepared for the 21 hours of daylight, since they never faced that in their lives, and hence, the subsequent tragedies that occurred.
Anyone ever experienced this at a tournament?