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BGonline.org Forums
NON-ruling in Madison
Posted By: Steve Mellen In Response To: NON-ruling in Madison (Chuck Bower)
Date: Thursday, 9 September 2010, at 6:36 p.m.
The amount of time that will be lost by people deciding whether to condone illegal plays is negligible in the big picture. There's probably an average of 1 illegal play per match, if that. All these fears that people are going to take advantage of the centered clock to go have a smoke, calculate gammon prices down to the 4th decimal place, and all that strike me as tremendously overblown. The penalty for an illegal move is still pretty minor, in the grand scheme of things (compare to speed chess, for example). Letting the opponent think about whether to condone the play without facing time pressure hardly makes the penalty draconian.
Imagine in football if a penalty were called on the defense, and the clock continued to tick down while the offense decides whether to accept or reject the penalty. It doesn't take long to decide whether to accept a penalty, but still, this would be ridiculous.
This much I know: if my opponent makes an illegal play, I am stopping the clock right away to call attention to it. It's not such a big deal to leave it stopped until the situation is resolved. Do you think that I am required to point out the illegal move on my own time, and stop the clock only if my opponent disagrees? This strikes me as a very formalistic way to address what is supposed to be an irregularity.
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