Two questions

I like to be early so I may be out the door two hours before a round starts since I have to drive to the site, set up my computer, printer, etc., check to make sure nothing has happened to the site overnight, and still be there in time to be on site for the early arrivals. Many sites do not have access to e-mail, so an e-mail two hours before a round would NOT be likely to reach me in time. I had somebody else text-message my phone saying that he’d be missing that week’s round of a multi-week club event. I don’t do text messaging and I only turn on my cell phone when I’m going to be out, so that message was not seen.

When a TD doesn’t know that a player withdrew then the player is likely to get paired. When that player’s opponent reports it as a win (rather than as a forfeit win) then the TD still doesn’t know the player’s withdrawn and the player gets paired in the following round (with another chance of a win being reported rather than a forfeit win). A TD may need to confirm that a game was not actually played (probably checking with the opponents) before changing it from a rateable to a non-rateable game.

Almost every game in such a question was not actually played, but I have heard from a couple of TDs that somebody will try to have a loss turned into a forfeit loss to avoid the rating hit. Without knowing anything about you, the TD, or the opponents, the odds overwhelmingly favor your claim being correct, but many TDs will still take an additional step to verify it first. Now that we have re-rating, about the only times I can think of off-hand where the delay from a verification step would make a difference would be if it delayed things to after the generation of the monthly supplement (would affect one month worth of entries - more for a long delay) or if an organizer is using the latest website ratings rather than the supplement ratings (should be part of the TLA and advertisements in that case).

Not every player realizes the difference between reporting a win and reporting a forfeit win. That is one reason why many TDs will check all of the games around the half-hour point to find the no-shows and explain the forfeit procedures to the player present (don’t forget to go over it with the score-table person if the event has players reporting scores to a person instead of marking the pairing sheet).
I remember some times last century where there was a round two forfeit in scholastic tournaments and I went back to the round one opponent and finally learned that the opponent had never shown (and changed round one to a forfeit as well). Some procedural changes were made to help avoid that happening in the future.

If the organizer is supplying the boards and sets, the opponent does not have a clock, and the opponent is spending his waiting time watching the top boards, then the TD may not have anything to indicate that a no-show forfeit is coming up on a board (checking paired but unreported games would do it, but many players will spend time analyzing in the skittles room before reporting the result, so that type of check would result in a number of false positive hits).

Unless the tournament director has announced that he will check email for withdrawals, it’s a pretty big stretch to assume that email is a valid method of withdrawing from the event.

I never check email during an event but I do make sure I have a cell phone available, with the number in pre-event publicity. (I did have an event where a no-show left a message on my HOME phone a half hour before the first round letting me know he wasn’t coming.)

However, that doesn’t change the fact that if those games weren’t actually played, they should have been reported to the TD as such by your opponents and you should (probably) have been withdrawn after the first no-show forfeit.

And people wonder why we want Club TDs to have to pass a test on the rules!

An email 2 hours in advance in general would not be sufficient - unless the td replied that he had received that email. It is your responsibility to make sure that the td has received the withdrawal. I would not change the results of the games until I had talked with the opponents, and that may well take some time.

Do you mean a notification that the games are under review and any update would impact their ratings, or that the opponents are involved in the decision?

All of the above. I would need to get confirmation that the games had not been played. If both opponents said that they had played and there were no forfeits, then I would not be changing the results.

I dunno, Tom. If Player A says “I had withdrawn from the event and wasn’t there” and Player B says “We played the game and I won”, you’ve kind of got a problem, don’t you?

It is questionable at best that that a TD would pair a player that just lost on forfeit in the next round without at least some kind of explanation from the player. Second point is how did a TD allow a game to be rated if it wasn’t played? Was the tournament so large that he didn’t notice someone sitting at a board with a clock running and no opponent twice? I’ve directed at 1000+ player tournaments and this doesn’t happen. Did both players not know that a forfeit is posted as 1F-0F? In order for 2 unplayed games to be submitted for rating, it would seem that the TD did not do his job well. At a minimum, this director should get more experience working as an assistant to a more experienced director.

I will say that email is not a good way to notify a director unless he specifically says it’s acceptable. I direct at a club which plays at a location without access to Internet. Also, I often come straight from work so I won’t see any messages until after get home from the club. I posted a sign to that effect at my club and still a few will try email anyway.

Sending an email two hours before the round would normally not be good enough to withdraw a player, for the reasons already stated. However, that email, read later, could be a good indication that the games were not played. Of course, the TD should still verify with the players…

Looking through the crosstables of Fromper, rather quickly, I see only one event this year in which he has losses in the last two rounds and that was directed by an NTD who, I think, would not make that mistake. That is to say that he would be checking for missing players, early in the round, and potential forfeits. Three other events show unplayed games in the last two rounds but two of those were also directed by an NTD who I know would take the same steps. The last tournament showing unplayed games in rounds four and five was directed by a Club TD, in his very first event as a tournament director. That crosstable also shows, in red letters, that corrections have been made. Therefore, I suspect that the problem was resolved…

I always check, and instruct my TDs to check, for missing players for three reasons: 1) Potential forfeits, 2) to ensure that, if there are forfeits, they are recorded correctly, and 3) for late arriving players who may set up the clock incorrectly, not splitting the elapsed time (if the player present does not have a clock already set and started.). In the latter, I make note when a player is there, but does not have a clock. I start checking very early, about 10 minutes into the round, and continue checking my list, crossing out the board and color, e.g., 13W NC (for White missing on Board 13 and the player who is there does not have a clock), as players arrive. Add #4 to that – To ensure that if White, but not Black, is present, he or she makes the first move and does not wait for Black to arrive…

It’s definitely going to be a problem. But it seems to me that the problem would be made much worse by changing the results to a forfeit and then having the other two players each give you the gamescores of their wins.