What's the worst sportsmanship you ever saw?

All Things Chess
61

I thought football has been changed. When was the clock always stopped for an incomplete pass and when was it only stopped if the incomplete pass occurred in the last minutes of a half?
There is also the absolute cut-off at the end of the overtime period to declare a still-tied game is over (well, at least until you get to the play-offs). I think hockey has that same situation.

Baseball has been on a clock for darkness (took a lo-o-ong time for lights to be put at Wrigley Field - until then AL games or non-Wrigley NL games were treated differently from Wrigley NL games) and for weather (five innings can make a complete game). Baseball even has (rare) adjournments.

I remember hearing the phrase “penalty time” for soccer, but I’m not sure what that means.

62

I am not excusing his behavior. No one should. Not even him. But, he may have been having a bad day due to factors unrelated to chess. The perceived unfairness of the ambiguous clock setting apparently was the final straw. Think about this. There are few things in life as fair and above board as chess. You get married and later divorce. Your spouse gets the house, the car, and the dog. You have support obligations to pay. Then your employer lays you off even though you are the company’s star employee. Someone in another country does half as good a job as you do for far less. So life is not fair nor should one expect it to be. But, now let’s sit down for a chess game. There are always 32 pieces and 64 squares, no more and no less. Your destiny, for once, is in your hands, except for some screwed up time clock rule that most people don’t understand or want anyway. USCF needs to throw this rule out and remove an unnecessary source of frustration.

Had this rule not been used perhaps these two would have been great friends with one confiding in the other the things that were really bothering him.

63

I can’t see how that rule is remotely confusing. You should never assume you have one second more than what the clock shows, so it’s clocks that actually do only display the second time control once you finish using the time from the first which are confusing. In just about every tournament I’ve been to, five minutes come off the clock for a five-second delay, unless only one game is being played in a day (like many club tournaments which hold one game per week on a certain night) in which case there’s no need to take the five minutes off each side to avoid delaying the next round. Even G/60 tournaments can be on a tight schedule which requires this, especially when the first round starts late – which we all wish wouldn’t happen, but which often does.

And given a choice – which I am, as long as I show up on time – I will never play without a delay clock. I’ve won a number of games on the edge of time forfeiture thanks to those five seconds per move. If increment is used, I’m fine with that, though I’ve never played in a tournament with it.

64

A couple months ago I was paired with a somewhat quirky individual - one who consistently stands out a bit by his scruffy appearance, including both infrequent grooming and sloppy attire. (In short, he looks like a chessplayer!) I hadn’t played this person previously, but had sized him up as a very serious player; his rating was about 200 points above mine. I’ll call this guy “Roger” just for reference here - it’s not his real name, of course.

I played 1.e4 and he deployed Petrov’s Defense. I hadn’t played that before myself, but had encountered it, and had studied it a little… just a little. I declined the pawn and instead played 3.d4 which I knew was a sound alternative (“Modern Attack”?), and knew a little bit about how to play it. Surprisingly to me, this seemed to throw him off a little - evidenced by his play, general body English, and additional time he was taking (which was atypical for him).

I played the opening and most of the middle game pretty well. While material was equal, my position around move 25-30 was likely superior. However - and I did not want to tell him this - I had had some medical issues the previous week (details unimportant!) and was feeling quite uncomfortable - getting worse as the evening wore on. I was starting to wish I had stayed home, and to the surprise of some onlookers, I asked for a draw. I rarely would ask for a draw in general, and the ONLY reason I did so at this point was my physical discomfort, along with the realization that a long endgame lay ahead. So after about move 30, admittedly, I was thinking of this as the preferred outcome… for me, in this situation. And I suspected he’d be relieved by the option as well.

But I didn’t think about the proper “mechanics”, and in fact offered Roger the draw out of turn. He got very upset because of the way I did this, which I readily admit now was not procedurally correct. But intsead of just saying that quietly (i.e., in the mode that I had addressed him), he made a big demonstration of his dissatisfaction. Roger stopped both clocks, stood up, threw his hands in the air, and exclaimed loudly: “You’re out of turn! You can’t talk like that! Where is the TD?” …which unnecessarily disturbed every game in the room.

This was completely over-the-top, given the obvious intent and tenor of my “talking”. Additionally, it’s a small room - and the TD was literally in a game about 12 feet away from us. No outburst was required, and others also made known their displeasure to Roger. As in many cases, reactions to him were probably somewhat shaped by his past behavior, as well - while he’s not loathed, he’s clearly not the most popular guy in the club. At that moment, I didn’t get what he was trying to accomplish with the added drama. But no big deal, I understood that maybe he was distracted by that, so I won’t do it again.

The TD also didn’t understand, and didn’t take kindly to his outburst. “So- just what did he say?” “He said he wanted a draw. On my turn.” “OK - and what do you want me to do?” Roger didn’t answer, but just pointed to the (still stopped) clock. Clearly he wanted me assessed a penalty, but even he could now see he wasn’t getting much sympathy. For my part, I was now getting a bit upset at him, but I kept that inside me. I decided to not ask for a draw again, but was determined to play through my discomfort and attempt to win. He settled back in and I restarted the clock, but obviously there was something now ‘in the air’ between us - and, unfortunately I think, much more interest in our game - around the room. I’m pretty sure I had nearly everyone’s sympathy at that point (of course that’s not worth anything quantitative).

But the story actually escalates - and, I think - gets more entertaining, a bit later. After about 5-10 minutes (maybe 3 moves on each side), and in fact about three times after that, Roger (who sports a bit of a paunch) actually pulls his shirt up out of his belt… and not just a little, but WAAAY up - and starts scratching his bare belly! And not just a little rub - but instead a full, five-fingernail, very audible scratch. And not just for quick itch relief; instead, an exaggerated, prolonged, low-frequency/high volume event. Scratch, scratch, SCRRRRAAAATTTCH.

Way more than any out-of-turn draw request… now THAT was distracting. But what would have been otherwise upsetting to me was so ridiculous… that any intended the distraction was more than offset by the humor factor! So in the net result it surprisingly didn’t bother me. The kind of thing that chessplayers do, earning us some of our reputation… I guess.

I played on quietly, but continued to struggle (physically) and eventually made a C-player mistake - exchanging Knights in a manner that let his Bishop out of a hemmed-in position. I had worked to push him there, earlier, and in retrospect my exchange was clearly a mistake. Admittedly, it was meant to move toward a draw - not my typical mindset - and in doing so, unfortunately gave Roger the game. I ultimately lost a minor piece engame by literally one tempo, but my heart was not completely in it - which I regret.

So the bad sportsmanship, in my opinion, was in two parts: first the outburst, then the belly-scratch. I enjoyed telling my wife and 20-yr old daughter about it the following morning, of course emphasizing the second part… and evoking some laughs and a chorus of "EWWWWW"s!

65

Sounds like Roger has the makings for a great Saturday Night Live skit.

66

Yeah, does he live in a van “down by the river”?

 Thankfully, almost all chessplayers really are good sportsmen, which makes some things really stick out in our memories. Of course the acts of good sportsmanship far outweigh these exceptions, but we more or less just come to expect the best of people, which is good principled practice. 

 I remember a player's hand "hovering" over his pieces during time trouble, ready to make his next moves. The other player (not so tenderly) asked him to "quit hovering", which served to heighten the anxiety of the game. The guy with his hands over his pieces was very tense and nervous by this time, and his hands were shaking a great deal. I think that this all goes to show that we lose ourselves, at least a little bit, in our attempts to hold the balance in the game. I also think this is a nice testimony to our competitive desire. This were/are both good guys and friends, but the tension remained for years after this incident. Not moments of insanity or anything, but we all like to "try really hard"!  :unamused:
67

Maybe not the worst thing I’ve seen, but one of the most curious, was at a South Carolina Open a few years ago. A good friend of mine carried a couple of “Magic: the Gathering” cards and laid them beside the board before every game. Just a silly little superstition of his. My friend was grinding his opponent down in an endgame, when the opponent sprung up to fetch tournament director Pete Danker. The opponent then came storming back with Pete to point at the cards an announce “These cards gave him evil powers! He only beat be because of the evil cards!” Pete was stunned and reviewed the cards to find no chess material on the cards.

The opponent, who had also lost to my friend in a tough game at the Chicago Open earlier that year, apologized the next day, and admitted he was just frustrated with the loss.

68

Dang! That was one of the questions on the Senior Director’s test I just took. :open_mouth:

“When is Hocus Pokus allowed?”

(a) When you have the Bishop Pair.
(b) When hopelessly down by a Queen, two pawns, and a knight.
(c) When you play in the REAL Red River Shootout, the annual match between the most fanatical chess players in Oklahoma and Texas.
(d) All of the above, but only when the match is played on Sunday.
(e) None of the above.

It was a very hard test and I am waiting the results. :unamused:

69

This happened at a tournament during the summer of 2009. A guy playing open section lost his first match and was thoroughly upset. He gets paired against a lower rated player and while alot of us are at lunch he loses. He immediately slams the table with fist, bangs on the wall, Screams at the top of his lungs, Rips his dress shirt off and runs out of the building.

70

Now that’s funny, and could be the stage for a great movie clip, about the mental instability of Chessplayers! :open_mouth:
I guess some think that winning really IS everything.

71

ROFL, that’s a beauty… almost sounds biblical! I wish I could have seen that.

On further reflection, the guy may have a whole drawer full of cheap, tear-away shirts. He does this routinely, and when he gets home he has a good chuckle over his ‘act’.

We can always hope!

72

A few more “gems” of poor sportsmanship I have seen at major tournaments:

  1. A player makes a bad move, gets up and walks over to a corner of the room and proceeds to bang his head on the wall saying, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
  2. A fight at the Pan Am Intercollegiate. One player asks his team captain, who is in severe time trouble, for the key to their hotel room. When the captain waves him away, his team member comes back with a glass of water and drops it into the middle of the table. The team captain hits him and in the ensuing fight the table is broken, pieces and clocks fly. On other boards many just shrug and go back to their games.
  3. Player swearing at a young child who comes over to another player’s daddy to hug him while he is playing. The floor TD ejects him from the tournament before he is KOed by the father.
  4. Player walks over to a garbage can and dumps his pieces after losing a game. Have seen this happen several times. One player said afterwards, “There are too many losses in this set. I’m buying a new one.”
  5. Heard this plaintive whine in the relative quiet of a tournament room, “But I was winning.”
  6. Have been told by one opponent, “You’re just a lucky player.” Thanked him and showed him the book, “How to be Lucky in Chess.” Then walked away to collect first prize money.

Having seen many instances of poor sportsmanship in chess, I can say that on the whole most players are well behaved and act with a code of honor. Some of the bad sportsmanship I have witnessed in tennis, pool, football, basketball, and other sports makes what happens in chess pale by comparison.

73

It was the last round and a fierce battle was taking place on Board Two. Both players were in time trouble and it was a very complicated position. All the other games had finished, so everyone was watching this game. One of the players blunders, hangs a piece, and then resigns in disgust. One of the spectators, who had earlier won his game on Board One, said, “How could you make such a stupid move??! All you have to do is not lose this game, and I win Clear First!”