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BGonline.org Forums
Another strange incident from the Cleveland Tourney
Posted By: Peggy Neubig
Date: Wednesday, 30 March 2011, at 5:22 a.m.
I was in the finals of the blitz playoffs, waiting several hours for the other half of the draw to catch up. Finally a relative newcomer, Oleg Ragorodsky,(IL) played Mary Hickey for the other finalist position and won. I had watched part of the match and both players were aware that the winner was to play me for the trophy.
After winning the match, Oleg reported his match win against Mary. He was then asked if he had played me yet, and said yes he had, and he had won that match too. So they gave him the trophy and the prize money.
I saw that he was finished playing Mary and suggested we use my board for our match, not realizing that he had already claimed to have beaten me. But he didn't come over to my board or offer to use his, or say that he had already won the event, he just went to talk to a friend, then left the room. I waited a bit, and when he didn't return, I went to Fran and Joe Miller and said that I didn't know where he was but he seemed to be refusing to play the finals match.
They said - oh no! He had told them that he had played and beaten me and so they had given him the money and trophy. I said that we hadn't played our match yet, he evidently lied to them. Paul was supposed to be monitoring the matches at this point (5pm on Sunday) and agreed that he hadn't seen Oleg and me playing after Oleg had finished playing Mary.
Fran found Oleg in the lobby and made him come back into the room and give back the trophy and money. When they confronted him, he agreed that he hadn't played me, but claimed not to know my name or the tourney format. He agreed that I had told him that I played the winner of his match with Mary, (and obviously he should have realized that he hadn't played 2 women in a row, even if he didn't know our names!) but he said that he got confused when they asked him if he had beaten both Mary and Peggy, supposedly thinking they were the same person.
During our match, he whined about how late it was getting and he had a flight to catch every time I paused to study a complicated position. I told him it was his own fault for refusing to play for 45 minutes and he could always default. He claimed he couldn't understand why I was upset with him just because he didn't know my name - refusing to acknowledge that he had lied to Joe and Fran about playing and beating me!
Unfortunately, he rolled several doubles on bearoff at double match point and won the match and the Blitz event.
What do all of you think about this? Are there rules about lying about having played a match and claiming the prize money??? The director made him give the money and trophy back and actually play the match, but it seems to me that there should be something more - if they hadn't found him in the lobby, he would have gotten away with it, and I would have been screwed out of a chance to win the event. One person who was aware of what happened said to me later that the director should have defaulted Oleg and awarded the trophy and prize money to me because lying about something like that shouldn't be tolerated.
And do other directors want someone playing in their tourneys who has lied to another director about playing and winning a finals match that he hadn't played?? Or could this just be seen as a inexperienced tournament player's confusion about names and format?
What do you think?
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