The standard penalty for 1st offense is 10 minutes off the offenders time or half the remaining time under 20 minutes.
With the Chronos for one of the blitz settings one can show 10ths of a second, but as I’m looking at the user’s guide while posting this, I can not see a way to make that setting for a normal sudden death game with time delay.
When we were discussing the incident outside the playing room the TD mentioned something about “I don’t know how to reduce the delay.” I’m not sure she meant reducing the time to a 1/2 a second or reducing the offender’s 5 second delay. I’ve never heard of the option of reducing the delay when there’s only a second left on the clock. Is that an appropriate option for a cell phone offense with 1 second left?
In the course of the TD coming over to rule on the cell phone violation, the phone rang again. I don’t really see that as a second offense meriting a forfeit, but she was on the verge of forfeiting him. Even if that is considered a second offense I did not want to receive a win for a game where I was clearly lost.
Since neither the TD or the players had any idea how to set the clock to a 1/2 second we continued as is. I resigned several moves later when it was apparent he was promoting, and it was going to cost me my last piece, and he’s still have more pawns.
Heck, if there was only a second on the clock, then calling the TD over to discuss it might actually help the offender since they could get their thoughts in order about how they were going to make the next series of moves within the delay time.
I’ve never considered a situation like this; I’ll be interested to hear the different opinions. However, as far as the second call goes, I would personally view it as a second offense and forfeit the game. (Even if the player forgot his/her phone was on and made an honest mistake on the first call, why didn’t they turn it off AT THAT POINT, especially when the TD is being called over for a claim?)
If the TD wants to cut a player’s remaining time in half, and the number of remaining seconds is odd, just round the remaining time up to the next full second.
There is no way to “reduce the delay”, nor would there be a reason to do so. Just run the clock for a second or two.
This is a case where the punishment may be inherent in the crime, so there may be no need for the opponent to make a claim. If a player’s phone rings when that player has only 1 second left, it’s sure not to have a favorable effect on that player’s chances.
My opponent was not a random player. It’s someone I’ve known for many years. He’s been club champion at our club in Westchester County. His 8 year old son plays in the tournaments I direct. I would have felt uncomfortable demanding a forfeit there, and even a draw would not have felt right.
The only reason I had the director come over was that she was already watching, and would have come over anyway, especially when the phone rang again. Often in the heat of the moment one does not realize how hopeless things are until there is a pause in the action. You see 1 second on the opponent’s clock and think there’s hope. In reality there is none, and it’s best to save your energy for the next game.
It was energy well saved. I won my last 2 games, including an upset win against a 2100 and finished 3-1, winning the under 2000 prize. Sometimes doing the right thing works out better in the long run.
Congrtulations – you are a far better sport, and a better realist, than the average tournament player.
Sometimes a player is better off not demanding his rights. In one event I directed a few years ago, both players were in extreme time pressure using an old BHB (non-delay) clock. One player made an illegal move, with a piece that had no legal move. The other stopped the clock and asked for two minutes to be added. The pause gave the first player the opportunity to realize that he had a mate in one, which of course he executed as soon as the game resumed.
