So there was once a marginal situation where your wording would have helped slightly. Because of that, you want to upset the whole applecart? Your version wasn’t really necessary in that case anyway, because of the draw agreement.
This could be a recipe for disaster. What happens if player A calls the flag down, then a full minute passes before player B accepts the draw? What if the players have already posted the result? What if the draw is accepted only after player B has talked to his friends and coaches? What if the next round pairings are already posted, based on the original flag fall?
It seems to me a game has to end sometime, and the logical place to end it is whenever a game-ending event occurs (e.g. draw accepted, or flag called). What happens when there are two game-ending events? The obvious answer is, whichever happens first ends the game.
How so (assuming player A made the move, then offered the draw, then pressed the clock)?
It seems perfectly legitimate to take advantage of your opponent’s time pressure by playing an unexpected move. If your move is unexpected partially (or wholly) because it includes a draw offer, how is that any different?
Bill Smythe
(P.S. This is a minor point. I agree with you in general, that the call of a flag fall should take precedence over acceptance of a draw, if the former occurred first.)
I believe I covered this already, in an earlier post. It is forbidden to distract or annoy the opponent in any way. Speaking to a player with two seconds left might (I said “might,” not “would”) be considered a distraction or annoyance.
Taking it back a step: Of course this rule does not give a player a blank check to complain that his opponent is looking at him too loudly. The TD must decide whether the behavior of which he is complaining would be distracting to a reasonable person. In the case we are discussing, I would not make a ruling without seeing what happened myself. In the abstract, though, I think a penalty of, say, one second added to the complainant’s clock would be an equitable remedy, since it would obviously be useless for anything other than immediately accepting the draw offer.
This is a much simpler case than most “distraction” claims, which in my experience usually involve some moonbat saying his opponent is making gestures no one else can see.