Just joking around at our club championship, one player who desperately wants to win the club championship trophy offered the highest rated player money to withdraw before next weeks final round. He was not serious, but would this an ethical violation if it was for real? I feel it is, but where is the justification?
Regards, Ernie
Definitely yes, it is an unsportsmanlike attempt to manipulate the results.
Sounds like a great question for a TD exam, but Senior, ANTD or NTD?
(Or maybe all 3, but with different answers expected?)
Will the different answers depend on how much money was offered? 
Kind of like the guy who would trick his friends while saying “bet you a nickel” (I think it was in a non-fiction Martin Gardner book). They knew they would going to be tricked or scammed, but figured that the entertainment value would be worth a nickel. One of my favorites was when he asked what the odds were of a nickel landing heads or tails when released edge on from three inches above a table. When the response was 50% either way he said “bet you a nickel I can release it and it will land and stay on the edge”. After getting the bet accepted he wet the nickel and a vertical glass and carefully put it right against the glass and released it, with the edge hitting the table while the face of the nickel stayed stuck to the glass.
The “Standards of Conduct” portion of the “Code of Ethics” (item 6 under Code of Ethics) notes that it is not intended to be an exhaustive list and subparagraph c states
(Emphasis by me.) The situation seems to fall under the bolded portion.
I would note, however - that I am less certain that it would be an ethical violation IF the highest rated player is not in contention for a prize AND is not likely to have to play the player making the offer in the final round - i.e. if it were unlikely that the highest rated player would have a meaningful impact on the results, would it still be an ethical violation? In THAT circumstance is it any worse than a “curiously paid withdrawal?”
I don’t think there are any printed standards in the Code of Ethics that actually would make Desperate Player guilty of an ethical violation in the above hypothetical. However, the Code of Ethics isn’t designed to be all-encompassing, and such an offer doesn’t pass the olfactory test, IMHO.
Paraphrasing Potter Stewart, in relevant part (paraphrase is underlined):
I will consider this unethical. Because the withdrawal of the top player will mess up the pairings at the last round, alter the results and has the potential to affect the class prizes if there is any. Just a thought.
FIDE rules are more explicit about “sportsmanship”, addressing it almost immediately in its rules.
USCF rules have been too busy addressing every possible decision a TD would need to make. Independent judgement has been squelched by our rulebook’s form. TDs fear having to decide anything, hanging on to the rulebook.
Of course, when I worked on the second edition with Martin Morrison, et al, it was just the opposite. There were few established standards, especially in pairings.
Comparing USCF rules with the Federal tax code is fair. Over decades, more and more has been added to each unnecessarily, (though the reasons are different).
All the best, Joe Lux NTD
I wonder how much is due to US society. Back in the second and third edition days I would often make the same decisions I’d make now, but now I have a specific rule to point to instead of having the player (or parent) complain, yell, and harangue other players (or parents and coaches) talking for hours about my unfair, high-handed, discriminatory, ridiculous judgements (which are now explicitly allowed in the rulebook). I know of one coach who, even with the current rulebook, has wondered which (suburban) TD will discriminate against his (suburban) team this time. Other TDs had lawsuit threats (which generally backfire because once a lawsuit is threatened any further discussion is essentially closed - based on advice from lawyers - and the person making the threat eliminates any chance of getting a decision calmly discussed and possibly changed).
So the admittedly very bloated rulebook has made it less likely to have blow-ups when you can cite a rule that is more exact than simply “TD judgement”. I dislike such confrontations, as I’m sure others do, but I am at least willing to accept such a confrontation if that is the cost involved with making the correct ruling. Others will back down from a confrontation even if it means making a sub-par, or wrong ruling, unless they can point to a specific rule that clearly backs them up (and sometimes not even then, but such TDs can’t be helped by anything other than firm mentoring and hard-earned experience - the existence of those TDs gives some players/parents/coaches an incentive to at least try a blow-up in the hopes that they can get a ruling changed even if it shouldn’t be).
I don’t know if other countries have that litigous tradition that has brought about that bloat in response.
There is more than just making the correct ruling to TDing. Convincing that you are impartial to those involved, is equally important. Using the rulebook as an excuse is poor directing.
Should you have an extreme case, I suggest handing them the rulebook, and ask them to find why you cannot make your ruling, rather than they insisting that you show them why you can.
All the best, Joe
I knew a TD who, when exactly six players entered a section of a tournament advertised as a swiss system, insisted on running it as a swiss instead of round robin. Of course he reached a point where pairings were impossible and different players had to wait to get an opponent. He may have been afraid of being reported for using common sense.
Rule 29L, Using round robin table in small Swiss, covers this situation quite well. An alternative would be rule 29K, Converting small Swiss to round robin. To me, this situation is an example of how it can be an advantage to have an expanded rulebook. It’s not so much that without these rules a TD would be afraid to make any changes to the basic Swiss system pairings, and would end up having to pair the same opponents more than once. The rules give inexperienced TDs advice on handling specific situations like this. It sounds like the TD who “insisted on running it as a Swiss” and then decided that “pairings were impossible” didn’t know about rules 29K and 29L, or missed the statement that even the most basic Swiss system rule, that players can’t be paired against each other more than once, has to be violated if there is no other way to pair the section. Was this before or after the publication of the 4th edition? How many rounds were there in the tournament?
IIRC, it was in the 1980’s. The tournament had five rounds so a round robin, rr guided swiss, or swiss guided rr should have all been considered before an ordinary vanilla swiss.
Ho hum, here we go again, the 6-player tournament.
If advertised as a Swiss, IMHO the best way to handle 6 players is to pair it as a Swiss in rounds 1 and 2. Then, in round 3, before posting the pairings you want to make, simply figure out whether any pairings exist for round 4 (without regard to score, rating, or color, as long as you avoid pairing the same players twice). If any round 4 pairings exist, you’re golden for round 3 – rounds 4 and 5 will fall into place nicely. If not, just make a transposition somewhere in round 3.
Oh, and change the transposition limit from 80 to 0 for color alternation – either at the start of the tournament, or before pairing round 3.
Given the availability of the above procedure, IMHO using round-robin tables in a 6-player Swiss is overkill.
Bill Smythe
Yes, but you’re an experienced TD. An inexperienced TD wouldn’t know to be careful about pairing round 3, unless he’d read the rulebook and remembered rules 29K and 29L. Overkill is better in this situation than underkill.
Some people can’t be convinced without something in black and white, and sometimes not even then.
When a coach is certain that five different NTDs have each in different events erroneously made bad rulings against his team and did not properly understand the rulebook (one of the NTDs was the AUTHOR of the rulebook), then I don’t see that coach being convinced by anything.
I’ve lost track of the number of times an NTD (more than just me) has calmly and carefully gone through a ruling step by step with the specific rules in the rulebook cited (sometimes including the logic behind the rule), and then had the parent or coach complain that the rulebook was wrong and that the ruling should be changed.
I have suggested to players/parents/coaches that if the don’t like a rule that there is a proper procedure for getting it changed. I’ve also explained that I am not about to change a rule during a tournament because I would have no defense if the opponent then complained (It’s also because the rule is correct). As far as I know, none of the complainants have EVER followed through about attempting to get the rule changed.
I recently had a parent complain about his son’s game. He asked to see the basis of my ruling in the rulebook in front of the chief TD (a more experienced NTD) who supported my ruling. While I had no obligation to show the parent as he was not a participant, I felt it was one way to stop his complaining. When I located the book and tried to show him, he claimed that he never asked to see it and that I was harassing him.
It’s probably better, instead of finding something in the rulebook to show the complainer, to simply hand the rulebook to the complainer and challenge him to find something that supports his position.
Bill Smythe
You know, all of this is nice and kind, going through the rulebook with those who
demand to see, but generally, this takes time. Time chief tournament directors
generally do not have in the busy spots of tournaments. When there is time,
such thoroughness is ideal. But, quite often, there is not. What is the priority is
getting the next round started properly and on time, or perhaps resolving more
important issues. The ability to properly prioritize is key for a chief td.
Rob Jones