What would you do?
Chris Bird
[size=85](Even though this real life example may seem trivial to some of the more experienced TDs that frequent these forums, it may be a question that others have not come across or thought about and therefore the responses and clarifications posted here will provide what I hope is a useful lesson.)[/size]
I’m not quite sure where you’re going with this. The obvious answer is that the TD must play through the game and determine which scoresheet is correct. This may lead to some additional questions if they don’t match, but there isn’t any general answer to that.
Even the MonRoi gives you access to the listed moves, so you can compare the two scoresheets. Before trying to play through the game I’ll simply compare the two scoresheets to find the discrepancy. The most recent time was when the claimant had missed two half-moves and temporarily had white and black in the wrong columns (having one full move being Ke4 Ke5 was a dead give-away).
I would try to answer the question without using the non-claimant’s scoresheet. I don’t see what relevance there is to one of the scoresheets being a MonRoi device - a scoresheet is a scoresheet.
The reason I try to resolve the claim using ONLY the claimant’s scoresheet is that it’s my experience that I’m going to have to play through the game ANYWAY - so I might as well bite the bullet and play through the claimant’s scoresheet. I prefer to NOT even look at the opponent’s scoresheet until my first attempt to play through the game supports the claim. If the claimant’s scoresheet does NOT support the claim, we are done (claim denied). If it does, only then do I ask to see the other scoresheet.
One reason for this is the principle that the player should not be forfeited SOLEY on the basis of his own scoresheet. I know…I know…you can use the player’s scoresheet as partial evidence - but if you can avoid it, you avoid that argument.
The other reason for my preferred method is that it makes it clear that I’m not listening to an ARGUMENT or trying to resolve a DIFFERENCE OF OPINION. I don’t want the players arguing about any discrepancy between the scoresheets. All I want to do is sit down with the claimant’s scoresheet and play through the game. I’m dealing ONLY with the claimant (often, you have to assure the opponent that he will have a chance to be heard…but not NOW).
In practice, a large number of claims fail at this point - and we are done. The most common case is that the claimant has left out a move pair and his scoresheet will become unplayable at some point. Some TD’s will now take the other scoresheet and try to accurately re-play the game - but this is both unnecessary and undesirable. NO ONE CARES (except the guy doing the bulletin) how the game actually played out, if it’s clear that the claim must be denied. Deny the claim and get the players back to their game.
Sometimes, the claimant’s scoresheet is unplayable…but can be salvaged using the opponent’s scoresheet. In that case, we do need the opponent’s scoresheet, and we probably also need a sound-proof room for the inevitable squabbling. Oh well.
Some TDs are very proud when they finally reconstruct the entire game, and then discover that the claimant has too many missing/incorrect move pairs. In my opinion, they should be less proud. They probably wasted a lot of time when they could have denied the claim much earlier.
so…back to the question: I take the claimant’s scoresheet and play through it. Most of the time, that’s all I need to do.
Of course the MonRoi is a little bit of a red herring, but some TDs may not have even seen one, never mind know how to handle one.
Regarding this particular claim, the first thing that I noticed is that the MonRoi was only on move 40 but the position matched the one on the board. I know from experience that it is difficult to “skip” a move using the MonRoi unless the player uses the less well known time trouble function it has that allows you to check off moves as they are played.
In this particular instance, the scoresheet on the MonRoi was complete and the players were at move 40. Player B had missed two moves at the bottom of the first column on his scoresheet where it had curled up. So, even though he thought he was at move 41 and that he had made time control, in fact he was a move short. I guess in this case the device showed one possible case where it may have an edge over a paper score keeping method.
Chris Bird
Oh - I see…the point of this question was to make a sales pitch.
Obviously I could (and probably should) have left that last sentence out. However, no, the point was to bring to people’s attention that whatever score keeping method is used, that the claim should be verified, despite the obvious front screen on the device showing move 40 and the same position as on the board. Don’t just take for granted that it is correct without using the scoresheet screen that is available for you to go over the game with.
Maybe, just maybe, someone reading this didn’t know that and will now be able to use that advice if they come across it while TDing at an event.
Chris Bird
Playing through a 40 move game when other games are going on around it takes a lot longer than a quick scan of the two scoresheets to see if the claimant missed some moves. The defendent’s scoresheet is not being used against the player, but is merely being used to see if the claim can be quickly and obviously rejected (the claimant had obvious missed moves between 32. Ke4 Ke5). This will sometimes allow a quick and acceptible rejection of a claim and allow a TD to spend the time overseeing other games near the end of the first time control. Looking at your response to my response, it looks like you saw my comment of “before trying to play through the game” and might have interpreted it as always meaning “instead of trying to play through the game”.
P.S. After taking about 20 seconds to scan the scoresheets, show what had happened, and have my simple rejection of the claim accepted, the class B player trying to claim a time-forfeit eventually converted his better position into a win against his expert-rated opponent. It would have taken a lot longer than 20 seconds to play through the game and there were other time pressure games going on.
This came up in the U.S. Championship in a slightly different context. A player made a fifty move draw claim. All players were using Monrois, but I had no idea how to get to the scoresheet screen, or even that there was one. Fortunately, Zeljka came over and showed me the screen, and it was very easy to make the ruling, subsequently declared correct by the members of this forum.
Alex Relyea
You haven’t had the pleasure of trying to decipher one of my mon roi games where I skipped an entire move pair, and my opponent has skipped a completely different move pair so it becomes very difficult to reconstruct until the game is completed. 
Fortunately this happened in a G/80 event so it wasn’t an issue.
PS. Thanks for a good job handling the Mon Roi stuff in Philly. A few of my friends actually were following me live. (Not sure if that was a good thing. LOL)
Just to clarify and avoid a possible misinterpretation, in the above-mentioned game, I compared the two scoresheets not to see whether or not the claimant had exceeded the allowable number of errors, but rather to see which move the game was really on and whether it had already moved to the second time control. Adding in those two half-moves pushed the game from the final move of the time control (by the claimant’s incorrect scoresheet) to the first move of the next time control (by the defendant’s correct scoresheet).