How will the tournament director report in a RR format if a player played one of the Rounds with the wrong color?
Normally, just as though the game was played with the correct colors. It’s still a round robin, no? (If you submit color information with the online rating report, you may want to correct the colors.)
A rather more interesting question might be, how do you pair subsequent rounds? i.e. do you assume the colors were as assigned, or as actually played?
In the case of a round robin, future pairings would not change, but colors maybe should. It’s likely you wouldn’t want to give a reward to the player who played white when he should have played black, by potentially giving him two more whites.
Typical quad pairings might be:
round 1:
3-1
4-2
round 2:
1-4
2-3
round 3:
1-2
3-4
In this case, if the pairing 3-1 was played with wrong colors, player 1 would end up with three whites. To prevent this you could switch colors in the 1-2 pairing in round 3. That way everybody would still end up with 2 whites and 1 black, or vice versa, which is the best you can expect anyway.
Bill Smythe
Would you do the same if the player had erroneously played black?
While his getting 3 blacks would be undesirable, it was a self-inflicted wound. Meanwhile, if I were his last round opponent and I was supposed to get white (giving me 2 whites and a black) and all of a sudden ended up with black (ending with 2 blacks and a white) to the benefit of my opponent who made the error that caused the mess, I wouldn’t be very happy. I’d argue he should live with his own mess.
I actually did that to myself once in an 8 player round robin, ending up with 5 blacks and 2 whites. Since it was my error I didn’t complain.
No one has made mention of the TD’s failure to spot this early enough to correct it during the game. IMO, that’s pretty close to a cardinal sin for a RR tournament.
For those who like monkey wrenches…what would you do in the event this happened in a RR tournament where pairings were announced well in advance (making it more likely that people had prepped for specific opponents with specific color assignments)?
My proposed answer is that the players would just have to live with the result of their game as played, and future pairings would remain as announced.
In a FIDE competition, the arbiter has great leeway:
The great part about this rule from my perspective is that the arbiter cannot be wrong.
My ruling would almost always be: restart the game with the correct colors, and elapsed time is lost.
Under USCF rules, if the color reversal is not discovered within the first ten moves, the reversed colors stand and play continues.
You would think this would happen more with scholastic players, but it happens sometimes with a few high rated players in Swiss System tournaments who rely on someone else to tell them what their pairing is because they can’t be bothered to go and check the pairing sheet themselves. They usually don’t have a set, board, clock, or pen either and come in ten minutes late after announcements. Unless the TD is walking around with a copy of the pairing/results sheet, knows all the players, and checks the boards as the round starts one or more of the games will be played with the wrong colors. The players find out at the end of the round when they post their result that, “Hey, I was supposed to play White.” For them to ignore their pairing color in a RR is really odd as they are so caught up with computer preparation for particular openings, knowing their color in a particular round is vital.
If it was a quick-rated quads night, there were a number of quads, and the TD didn’t know the players by sight, then I can see that happening. If it was a rescheduled game (multi-week RR at a club with one player unable to make a specific weeknight and a reschedule at the other player’s house - maybe over the weekend) then the TD wouldn’t have been there [don’t do this for a FIDE-rated event].
In either case the players may need to live with the consequences. I can see people trying to “game” the system to get an extra white. I can also see people trying to “game” the system to get an extra black against a weak opponent (or overwhelmingly strong opponent) in the expectation of being compensated with a white against a beatable strong opponent that would otherwise have to be faced with black.