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BGonline.org Forums
Peoria time default and summary of issues
Posted By: David Rockwell
Date: Thursday, 16 October 2008, at 7:20 p.m.
First let me mention the facts of Larry Leibster’s time default as I observed them. Larry WAS given 2 15 to play the match in consideration of his age. He did not time default a gin position. It was a non-contact bearoff where he had an advantage. I believe Larry had somewhere between 10 and 14 checker’s left. So, he used at least 16 seconds to bearoff one or two checkers in an uncomplicated position on his final play. The tournament director called the win, not Larry’s opponent. Larry’s opponent for the match was Lucky Nelson. Lucky is a fast player. The match took approximately two hours to play despite fast play from Lucky. Slow play was not only due to motor ability. Larry took to think about almost every move. He would usually put his cup down after rolling. He often took the time to lean back in his chair while pondering his move. He was taking his time.
Larry’s matches were the source of almost all of the tournament’s delays. This is true even though he had a bye in the first round and therefore started one round ahead of over half of the field. His matches were clocked starting in the second round. They were very slow despite the use of a clock. If he had prevailed against Lucky, his next round would have probably created additional tournament delays even though it would have been clocked from the beginning.
Now I would like to summarize the collective wisdom of our group with respect to clocks. Clocks are to be mandated for all matches. We don’t care whether or not a player wants to use a clock, we want them to use a clock and that’s more important than their feelings or opinions. We don’t care whether or not the match is causing delays. They need to use a clock even if they are one or more rounds ahead of the field. We don’t care whether or not there are enough clocks for all. Players who don’t own clocks will have to buy them or the TD will have to supply them. If there is a cost, the tournament will make less money or lose more money as the case may be. We don’t care whether or not people know how to set or use the clocks. They must learn. We don’t care whether or not the TD feels that mandatory clock usage would require additional staff. They are wrong and don’t know their own business as well as we know their business. We don’t care if a TD has an idea which might eliminate the worst problems without a full clock mandate. Clocks – my way or the highway – that’s our position.
Notwithstanding the above, tournament directors must learn to be more sympathetic with slow players, particularly older slow players. We do not want any time defaults. Shame on the tournament director who calls a time default! Shame on the player who accepts one! TDs must make exceptions that will allow slow players to slow their matches further so that unacceptable time defaults may be avoided.
Adopting these mandates should accomplish our goal of speeding all matches except the ones that are delaying the tournament. I believe this forum asked another question. It was, “Why aren’t tournament directors listening to us?” I can’t imagine why and the group will have to solve this mystery without any further input from me on the subject.
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