When is a result final?

Running Chess Tournaments
1

Referring to Players don't agree on result. - #3 by jwiewel for background…

The situation is as follows for a weekly club event, round 4 of 7.

  1. White has a bare king, Black has Q+P+K
  2. Black flags
  3. White posted a 1-0 result
  4. Players discuss the game in skittles room
  5. White leaves the site
  6. Black is confused by the result at the site and later emailed White to confirm the material.
  7. White agrees with the material listed and that it would mean a draw but asks, when is the posted result final?

I expected to find answers like “when it was posted but not corrected immediately.”

But 15I makes me think a correction is proper. No games are in progress until next Wednesday. What do you think? Do I need a committee or special referee?

==========
15I. Results reported incorrectly.
If the director learns of the correct result for any just-completed round either before or just after pairings have been
made for the next round, the director should correct the pairings if this can be done without disturbing too many
games already in progress. The correction may either be based on the correct result or on treating the incorrectly
reported result as an unreported result (29H), at the director’s discretion. Whichever of these is chosen, the result
must be corrected before pairing subsequent rounds, if any, and the corrected result shall be used for prize purposes.
If the error occurred in an earlier round, other than the round described above, the director shall still proceed as
above, but has discretion as to whether to use the correct result or the incorrect result for prize purposes. This
decision should be based on how much earlier in the tournament the error occurred and how many pairings were
affected.
TD TIP: Sometimes errors occur in the reporting of game results. Those errors need to be corrected immediately.
Fortunately the same methods used to correct unreported game results also work very well for incorrectly reported
game results. The difficulty arises when incorrectly reported results do not come to the director’s attention until
after several rounds, or even the end of the tournament. As long as there is no chance of a prize being involved,
correcting the results is easy. When prizes or a chance to win a prize are involved the director should take care.
Correcting incorrectly reported results that cause a player, paired in easier score groups for many rounds, to
US Chess Federation’s Official Rules of Chess, V 7th Edition, 1-1-24

2

The round is “just-completed” until the next round is ready to start, so you can simply make the correction. If other rounds get paired and played before making the correction then you still make the correction (it needs to get rated properly) but you may opt to use the originally reported result for prize purposes.

If it is a seven round tournament and round two was not corrected until after round three then do the correction and use the corrected result for prizes. If the round two result was not corrected until after round six then correct the result but warn the player whose score went up that the prize determination might use the originally reported result (for trophy tournaments remember that the tiebreaks of the opponents of the player getting a score reduced can also be adversely affected)

If you find out after the final round is played then wait until after prizes are determined before making corrections (you may want to change the original result to a forfeit game with the same result and reenter the two players back into the section with the actual rated result for the same round - change a round two win by Matthew over Mary to a forfeit win, re-enter Matthew and Mary, and then pair the players in round two with a rated result of Mary defeating Matthew). That makes the MSA cross-table match the results used for prizes and keeps the rated game in the same section so that bonus points remain correct.

3

If White has just a bare king, isn’t the best possible result for White a draw anyway?

Otherwise I agree with the recommendation to just go ahead and make the result change since the next round hasn’t been paired yet. (That assumes the two players agree on what the result should be, of course.)

4

Thanks a lot guys. Yes, the result on the board is obviously a draw but the question was about White’s “clerical error” and that’s cleared up :slight_smile: