What would you use a forfeit draw for? I see fewer than 50 games that have them so far this year, and I’ve never had a situation in which I felt they were justified.
Husband vs. wife pairing in last round!
I suppose the alternative is to make it a double forfeit. There were two such “draws” at the Philadelphia Open this year. In both cases friends got paired against each other, didn’t want to play, posted a draw on the pairing sheet, and never even sat down at the board or complained to the TD staff about their pairings.
I do believe that a director has an obligation not to submit the game for rating if he knows no moves were played. To a certain extent, a forfeit draw is like giving the players a second chance to given half point byes after the round as begun. I must add though that if the players were both given forfeit losses I wouldn’t feel sorry for them. It is the player’s obligation to know the rules and posting a result that was never played is a rather obvious rules violation.
What about a situation in which a game is interrupted by an external event – say, the fire alarm going off – and there’s no opportunity to replay?
29H6 allows scoring an unreported result as a win and a draw for pairing purposes. If the result wasn’t corrected, then it stands in the upload? (Though I would think the TD would make the effort to find out an unreported game result. Unless the players left after that round…)
Maybe a game was adjourned and following round paired using draw(s), then the adjourned game was never completed?
Just guessing…
Reporting results as a win and a draw (or possibly as a win for both players, or even as a loss for both players, though I don’t recall having ever seen that) is different from a double forfeit draw, because a forfeited game is not ratable and a W+D result is ratable for both players.
If memory serves, several years ago when a player was caught cheating at the World Open, his opponents who he had beat all received forfeit-draws.
If you’re talking about the player who had an earpiece to receive moves, the opponents were given half point byes to replace the games which were not really played against the cheater, but his software. He was removed from the tournament in such a way that his name did not appear on the wall chart. The half points were to replace the losses the players received against an illegal opponent.
A forfeit draw actually lists the player number on the wall chart in SwissSys and involves 2 players.
Pardon, I wasn’t clear (and might yet not be correct…) I was speaking to games in which the actual game result was not known in the face of having to pair a next round. (And then contriving that the players actually left and the actual round score can’t be determined.)
I don’t believe those would be submitted as ratable, would they? At least I wouldn’t want to sign off on the upload for such a game as rated if neither player had bothered to report the result. Yet I might want to preserve the record as win-draw (or maybe draw-draw even though I can’t see the rulebook directly supports that) so that when pairing questions come up from the MSA record later at least some indicator is there.
It’s a contrived situation, though, trying to stretch facts to match reality.
Second hypothetical… Round is paired, then neither player actually wishes to play the game. While it should be a double-zero forfeit, the soft-hearted TD treats it as a dual half-point bye for pairing and prize purposes yet forfeits it because TD wants to recognize the bye wasn’t requested in advance. (That breaks rules, I’m sure… but I could see it happening.)
Last contrived situation: Both players had requested a bye, but the TD didn’t get this entered correctly in the program.
But I’m just guessing, Mike… I think I’d handle any of the above (including my first post) differently. Maybe somebody who’s actually done it will post. 
What’s a forfeit draw?
Sounds like an oxymoron.
A forfeit draw is a game treated as a draw for pairing purposes but ignored for rating purposes.
It is similar to a half point bye. I suppose pairing programs might treat it differently than a half point bye when pairing subsequent rounds.
Due to a couple of mistakes, two players who requested first round byes are paired against each other and they of course do not show up. A computer operator may get decide to give them forfeit draws as an easy way to give them their half points. They were technically paired with each other already, so perhaps it is treated this way as to not pair them in later rounds.
Perhaps one of the players shows up early and notices the pairing and is too honest to try to get a forfeit win or perhaps both players drove to the tournament together and both see the incorrect pairing but do not want to play as they requested byes. Perhaps in a scholastic two players were repaired together as they appeared to be no shows in the first round and their two opponents were paired together to give them a game, and then the late players both show up slightly before the end of the round and they both want to continue playing and not get withdrawn due to being more than 1 hour late.
I am not saying giving them forfeit draws is the correct or best decision in these cases, but I can see this possibly happening.
I used a forfeit draw in the bottom quad of a tournament I ran. The two players had requested last round byes. They were scheduled to play each other in round 2. I just had the players in that quad play “round 3” before “round 2”.