i recently played my first chess tournament in 10 years and i observed a lot of people who complained of tiny noises and conversation. it was pretty funny to me becasue i personally could care less if some one talked on a phone while i’m playing, they can get naked, jump up on the table and dance a jig while singing a marry poppins song and i’d be ok with it as long as they didn’t knock over my pieces. now if they knocked my pieces over then i’d have to knock them over!
honestly, i suggest getting away from a uscf tournament every now and again and playing some relaxed blitz games for fun in a local restaurant, park, or game shop if noise is bugging you so much. getting used to a large amount of distractions while playing made uscf conditions seem like a sensory deprivation chamber for me. and playing only blitz for a year made my first hour long game seem like a lifetime. i don’t even like uscf but since every other good player i know seems to love it i have to join in the madness.
i don’t think anyone will take my advice but there it is anyways. they say you can lead a cow to water but not make it drink…
“Not a major distraction”? Easy to say when when you’re not the one distracted. “Sorry, Buddy. Suck it up. You’re the only one complaining. And I don’t have the stones to confront the true scofflaw.”
I seem to vaguely recall—or was it wishful thinking? at my age, memory becomes fuzzy—reading somewhere, while prepping for my TD exam, that the FIDE invoked a no vibrate rule for tournaments effective 1 July 2009. Or thereabouts. It’s all fuzzy.
Anyway, perhaps our beloved Rules Committee should follow suit. No sense letting our coddled players get rewarded for bad behavior. When, not if, one of our countrymen competes internationally and gets caught vibrating, they are bound to protest, "But in our tournaments . . . "
Are you one of those people who complains that the fans or air conditioning in the playing hall are too loud? I’m sorry, but if somebody’s phone vibrating in their pocket is loud enough to bug you, then you need to get a set of ear plugs for when you play. As far as I’m concerned, anything under 10 decibels that happens once for less than 3 seconds isn’t worth worrying about.
You talkin’ to me? I hate cellphones but have learned to watch the users use theirs.
New employees often go outside to deal with personal business. Performance based managers spend a lot of time outside away from people on their cellphones the month before their dismissal. This happens in a corporation that monitors everything.
I remember an Amish family that hung a sheet on the clothes line to signal a need to come to the house. How often are cell phone calls Important?
I post signs and make announcements prior to the first round that cell phones must be OFF. This is because some brands of cell phones that are on silent or vibrate will often beep when a text message arrives. This happened to a spectator/parent of one young player and I banished him from the room for the rest of the round but allowed him back in the playing room for the next round when I verified his phone was turned off.
As a TD, I have a strong preference to have games decided over the board when at all possible and so have issued a warning on a first phone violation. A second occurrence would result in a forfeit. If either player has under 5 minutes on the clock, I would add two minutes to his/her opponent’s clock in addition to a warning.
Once, a player said there was a family situation that demanded his phone be active and at least on vibrate. My reply was that his family is more important than a chess game and so he probably he had no business playing in the tournament. Since it was prior to round one, I offered to refund his entry fee. The player then turned his cell off and played.
I would have asked you to also refund my travel expenses!
If you’re going to have a stricter than normal cell phone policy, you should announce it in advance. It WILL influence decisions about attending your event.
I think it’s ridiculous for people to have stricter rules than the CCA events – those are among the best organized events with the most money at stake on the outcomes. And yet, I CAN have my cell phone set to vibrate when playing in one of them.
If I were a professional chess player, I might see things differently – or maybe not… I’ve never been forbidden to have a cell phone turned on (set to vibrate) while working – it’s always been available for taking emergency calls.
Agreed. With most phones, even the person’s opponent will barely hear anything when it vibrates. This actually happened to me the other day - I heard some buzzing that I actually thought might be an insect, until I saw a nearby player reach into his pocket, pull out his phone, glance at it, then put it back in his pocket without answering. It was quiet enough that if it had been my turn, and I’d been very focused on the position, I never would have noticed. It’s only because it was my opponent’s turn and I wasn’t so intensely focused that I even noticed this happening.
