Penalizing the right person

Running Chess Tournaments
1

Today I directed a scholastic event where something rather disturbing happened. A player was 3-0 going into the last round, and his father looked at the pairing, saw that the player would be paired down against a player 300 points lower, and without saying a word to anyone collected his son and left. So the tournament was decided on a forfeit. This is not the first time this father has done this in order to “protect” the rating of his son. It is not only disruptive, unfair, and unsportsmanlike to the opponent, but also to the other players competing, and the event itself.

So the question is, how can I penalize the father for doing this. The rules allow me of course to fine the player up to the amount of the EF, and of course we could reject the player from entering further events, but penalizing an 8 year old for the decision made by his insensitive jerk of a dad is wrong as well.

I could file an ethics complaint against the father who is also a USCF member, but let’s face it, that has little teeth. So are there any options that I am overlooking?

Glenn

2

I like the idea of making it a publically known situation, including the name of the father.

Let it be known on this forum, the ICA forum and any other forums or blogs that scholastic or any tournament people in Illinois read.

This way, the father will be known for doing that and in the future, organizers and TD’s will be aware of it beforehand and could possibly talk with the father to prevent this from happening. They could even threaten the father with a fine or some such.

Also the reputation of the father will be public. And others, especially adult players and parents of playing children will be able to comment to him on this, hopefully discouraging him from continuing this behavior.

3

Ron,

That is a valid point, and one I am considering. I haven’t done it initially because I haven’t decided if that would be fair to the kid, or to the team that he plays for that has nothing to do with the father’s action.

The last thing I want to do is to damage the reputation of the child or another innocent party, so I tend to err on the side of caution.

Glenn

4

Here’s another story that stays on topic.

As you may know I started a new chess club about 1 1/2 years ago in the LaSalle-Peru area. I have 2 adults that started as pure beginners in December of '07. They both played their first rated tournament in January in Peoria. They went to Joliet for the G45 event at the end of January.

In that last tournament one of the guys played this young kid rated in the 1400 range. I guess the kid is young, like 10 years old or younger.

Anyway, this kid kept putting his pawns and pieces off center on the squares and very near the edge of the squares. My “student” was playing his 4th rated game against this kid and treated him like he would some of the kids that play in our club. He would move the pawn or piece to the center of the square with the tips of his straight and unopened fingers. He would just shove the piece to the center of the square. This happened for about 3 or 4 moves with the kid not saying or doing anything about it.

The kid moved his pawn to h6 and my friend centered it as described above. This time however the kid shot up, stopped the clock, and said, “Touch move.”, and immediately got the TD with no further discussion. You guessed it. This time my friend could only take that h6 pawn and lose his queen.

The TD said that they were playing touch move. So my friend gave up his queen, not happy.

After the game, a couple of adults approached my friend at different times saying the kid really did not do right by my friend. A couple of people even said the kid is known to bait and trap people like that. Now this kid had his dad set up the chess set and all before the game. He also takes lessons, from what was said to my friend.

I told my friend the TD should have done something else and all, but in all honesty that situation was over and could not be undone.

However, I sure feel tempted to call this kid’s father saying the kid should be taught not to do that. I even considered calling the chess teacher to see if he knew the kid was pulling this garbage off.

So, who should be penalized?

5

The TD.

Your friend was obviously adjusting his piece. This wasn’t a touch move violation.

6

Since the dad here is the one paying the EF and the dad here is the one that withdraws without notice, then a method to teach the dad to follow the rules might be to charge him a fee up front. How does that work? When the dad pays the EF also charge him something like $50 (or whatever) that gets refunded only if he withdraws his son properly.

7

If your student had said “j’adoube” each time, there would have been no problem, correct?

It seems to me from reading comments that there is a certain amount of difficulty with players not placing the pieces neatly in the squares. At some point it may be worthwhile looking for a rule that says deliberately failing to do this consistently constitutes an infraction. Unless a person has a significant disability involving the nervous system, it ought to be a cinch to place the pieces near the center of the squares.

8

In the case of the dad rushing his child away, the dad is the guilty party, but I don’t know how to punish.

In the case of the lad taking advice given off the board, to consistently place his pieces off center in order to irritate the opponent and possibly trigger a touch-move situation, it is the lad’s fault that he followed that advice: but, nonetheless the rule is that you have to say “j’adoube”. So the older player actually broke the existing rule.

I think that a neighboring table would tire of hearing “j’adoube” “j’adoube” “j’adoube” “j’adoube” “j’adoube” every couple of minutes, and a TD would perhaps be sympathetic to advising the lad to center his own pieces so as to create less need to speak during the match.

9

A possible annoying behavoir complaint by the opponent about the “off center” activity could be made.

10

I can’t think of any action that could be taken directly against the parent that isn’t likely to affect the child one way or another, such as by the father deciding not to enter his son in your events at all.

That being the case, perhaps the most honest and straight forward thing to do is to sanction the child for withdrawing without notice, explaining to both of them WHY that is inappropriate. Otherwise, the son is likely to replicate that behavior as he gets older and more in control of his own actions.

Maybe that way they’ll both learn a lesson about courtesy in chess and in life, just as Ron’s student learned a lesson about touching the pieces, the hard way.

11

One time the parent of an up-and-coming junior had entered the son in a quad. When the parent saw that the kid was the highest rated in his quad, I was informed that “we’re leaving.” Unlike a Swiss, where the consequences would be a first-round forfeit, when someone drops out of a around-robin, such as a quad (after all the quad sections had been set and the pairings had been made), it destroys the tournament for the other three players, who were being deprived of a game.

Apparently, when the parent reported the quad lineups in a cell phone call to the player’s GM coach, the player’s “coach” had advised him not to play against lower-rateds. I told the parent, while the coach was listening on the other end, that if he forfeited the tournament in this manner, he would never play in any more of my tournaments, again.

The “coach” reconsidered, and the player stayed in and won the quad.

12

We used to have two players here who were fanatical about the position of their knights on the board, specifically whether the horse was facing forward or sideways. One preferred them facing forward, the other facing sideways. They’d constantly adjust both their own and their opponent’s knights to their preferred position, saying J’Adoube each time.

When they played each other, they’d try to adjust all the knights after each move. We finally had to put in a rule for them that said they could NOT adjust the position of their opponent’s knights.

13

I have to agree with Tim Just here. I think that it is only appropriate to charge the “player” a bond when he shows up saying that he’ll get it refunded if he doesn’t forfeit any games. I think that that’s clearly appropriate in this case, and probably better than banning him from playing in any of your tournaments. If he really wants to be a poor sport, there is very little you can do about it, but if you make it financially unattractive to have such a sad outcome decide the tournament, perhaps the player/father will reconsider. It would save the father a lot of grief if he bought himself a copy of the rulebook, learned how to do pairings, and figured out whether to withdraw his son before the final round is paired.

As to the “touch move” question, absolutely the TD is at fault. Apparently Kansas (unrated) scholastic chess has a rule that if you touch a piece, you have to move it. Period. This caused quite a few issues when I was directing the U.S. Junior Open in Kansas a few years ago. I had the following exchange at least three times: “He touched his piece, so now he has to move it.” “Did you think that he was trying to move his piece?” “No.” “So he doesn’t have to move it.” Apparently there was one kid there who was very honest, and when his opponent was away from the board he accidentally brushed up against his queen. Having no good queen moves, he immediately resigned. I later explained the rule to his father.

Bottom line is that there is no good substitute to knowing the rules.

Alex Relyea

14

I like Tim’s suggestion of a substantial deposit taken from the dad in Glenn’s instance.

In my friend/student’s incident, my first reaction was to query the TD exactly about the annoying behavior of the child. I must not have been clear in my depiction. No one coached the child to do this. People just mentioned he had a reputation for doing this. One of my inclinations was to approach the father and then the coach about this kid’s behavior.

My friend Wayne said exactly what Grant said, “It was an obvious adjustment.” The part of the rules interpreted here is that it was obvious he was not touching the piece to pick it up or anything like that. Yes, the exact detail of the rule is a touched piece must eithet be moved or taken if your opponents, but a inadvertant brushing of the piece or this obvious adjustment of the piece on the square is not the type of touch to the piece that would connotate a move or any consideration of a move to that piece. With that, I did tell my friend that he should have said j’adoube. You can be assured he won’t that happen again. After all, this was only his 4th rated game. I did tell him about touch move, but obviously did not give him this detailed an explanation of this rule.

Also, the kid let my friend adjust his pawn/pieces at least 3 - 4 times with no word to my friend about the touch move. This kid waited until my friend would lose substantial material before calling it on him. And when he did call it, there was no warning or anything, just lose the Queen. This type of behavior at the chess board is nothing more than unsportsmanlike gamemanship.

I did do nothing about it figuring my friend learned his lesson. But now that I look at the MSA, I actually know the TD personally. I think I’ll give him a call. Someone needs to educate this child that this is not the way to play chess to win…

15

In this case money wasn’t an object, but not being able to play in future tournaments against lots of higher-rated players was the deterrent.

16

What gets me is why anyone would serious worry about playing lower-rated players. Doesn’t one’s rating mean anything? Isn’t a 1600 considerably better than a 1300, for example?

17

Some people don’t want to risk their rating. The K factor varies the numbers but playing somebody 300 points lower could mean that a win gains 4 points, a draw loses 12 and a loss loses 28, so taking 87.5% would allow you to break even. If the lower rated player is young and under-rated (somewhat likely later in the tournament if the lower-rated player has the same score as you) then you may have a lower expected winning chance (62.5% if the aforementioned player is under-rated by 200 points).

A chess instructor around here emphasizes that ratings are only an approximation and you shouldn’t be overly concerned about them. To demonstrate that he deliberately tanked his internet rating by about 500 points and then proceeded to get it all back in fairly short period of time (just individual games, no tournaments).

Some other reasons for players to be protective of their ratings are:

  1. to be able to state better credentials as a chess teacher (a master can more easily justify charging more than an expert or class player)
  2. to make one of the top 100 lists (which in some areas can give some matching funds for instruction for young players)
  3. get a tournament invitation (such as for Denker qualifiers or FIDE events)
18

I see. Thanks for the examples. Still, if it were me, I’d bite the bullet and play. You’re worth your numbers or you ain’t. :smiley:

19

I recall a strong scholastic player some years ago who would win his first few games and then his father, calculating that he was about to be paired up so might not win, would pull him out of the tournament. At least the father would give notice, but once I told him something like, “You know, your son needs to face opponents stronger than him to develop his potential.” His response was, “That’s YOUR opinion.”

Bill Goichberg

20

I’d bet the kid stopped playing somewhere along the line. What a pathetic story.