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Director's ruling at the Chicago Open...

Posted By: walter meuwis
Date: Monday, 30 May 2016, at 3:07 a.m.

In Response To: Director's ruling at the Chicago Open... (rory)

I can understand that in a legal moves tournament in this case the position on the board is set back to the original position, however why is his clock also set back???

The rules are clear, a play (or move, depending on which part of the world you are in) is finished by pushing the clock.

As i see it his first move was still not finished since he didn't push his clock, he has been handling the dice and checkers in an illegal manner during the time of his first roll, it is not up to his opponent to point this out untill he pushed his clock because he still can notice the illegality of his actions and reset the original position and play the legal move. After he pushes his clock his opponent should point out the illegality of his move, reset the position and play on from there with the time thats left on his clock at that moment because all the illegal activities happened during the legal time of the initial roll so while there is a reason to reset the position there is no reason to reset the clock, he might even receive a time penalty for his illegal actions during his move depending on which rules are being used in the tournament. In this case it means that he lost the match because he ran out of time. It was never his opponents duty to point out the illegal activity during his move because he has no right and surely no duty to speak up during his move.

In all the tournaments i have played i have seen several rules where time penalties are mentioned, however i never saw a rule where an illegal activity is rewarded with a time increment.

I also can not understand that in a tournament of this high standard with so many players present that have a huge understanding of the rules the TD pertinently refuses to appoint a ruling comittee. Instead he claims to be the only one allowed to make a ruling. And when he needs to make a ruling he, as i read in this thread, consults 10 people, some even on the phone, instead of making the ruling all by himself. I do wonder whom he consulted because his ruling might aswell be being made by consulting the waiters and his mother on the phone. I simply can't get rid of a suspicion that keeps nagging in the back of my head, you can guess yourself which suspicion that is.

Now lets have a look at the consistency of this ruling. I am sure that we all have multiple times experienced a similar situation where you are on the bar with a closed board and your opponent keeps rolling without pushing his clock. I myself act similarly as Stick does, i point it out a few times and if he keeps making the same error i simply let his clock run, it is not my task to take care of my opponents clock. This can happen at the end of a match or even at a DMP but it also happens in the middle or beginning of a match. Is a player also unfair if it happens earlier in the match? To be consistent, in these cases also the original position should be set back on the board and by this ruling the clock should also be set back, the problem here is that neither player knows the exact time on his clock so is the TD going to guestimate an amount of time? Is he going to give an arbitrary number of seconds per guestimated illegal action? In this last case a player in a situation of a score around 3-away 3-away with only 30 seconds on his clock can intentionally make a rapid serie of illegal actions with the result that his timebank is set back higher than originally was the case. Also since when has a spectator the right to decide to which timebank a clock must be reset? Imagine the following; player A and spectator B are friends and have a rake in each other winnings so its in both their interest that player A wins, player A has 30 seconds on his clock and gets in this situation, he makes intentionally a serie of illegal actions and runs out of time, the spectator B goes to inform the TD the position is reset and the clock must also be reset, however the spectator now claims that player A had 2 min on his clock so is his clock being reset to 2 min?

The way i see it this ruling created a precedent to make cheating legally possible, good luck with that in the future.

With a correct ruling however all of these examples are void simply because the clock never gets reset.

There is one other big issue that upsets me a lot and no it is not because this happened to my fellow countryman, i can assure you that i would react completely similar about such a ruling to whichever player in the world. I read the whole thread and i saw several people publicly condemning him as an unfair player and even a cheater while they even don't know the player in question. Who do they think they are that they have the right to act as judge, jury and executioner? According to the rules the initial move was never finished so it was not up to him to point this out during his opponents move, there is no doubt in my mind that he was utterly convinced that his inactions were according the rules, I also do know him very well and can assure everybody that he is a very integer and fair player, i also notice in this thread that there is no consensus between the players about the appropriate action in such a situation, neither is there consensus about a correct ruling so how can some people blame him? He even got robbed from a victory by an inadequate ruling. He is the victim and not the perpetrator. Those who publicly accused him should be ashamed of themselves and publicly apologise to him.

As for myself, this ruling only reinforces my conviction of never playing a tournament in the USA.

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