39th Olympiad Khanty-Mansiysk 2010 (everything else)

[Alex Holowczak]

The Turkish guy is not only in favour of zero default times, but wanted to propose a system of fines for late arrivals. In addition he thought that players should have to ask permission of their national federation to play in other national federation's territory.

I can kind of see his point (the first one; the second is just bonkers). Obviously at the level where some of us rely on public transport to get to the playing venue and others may have a car but a lousy set of directions (or an incompetent navigator), we may have good reason for being late, but at an invitational tournament where players are being paid an appearance fee, and are probably staying either in the same building as the playing hall or somewhere very close by, not being ready to play at the appointed time is plain bad manners - to the organisers, sponsors and spectators, not to mention the opponent. Obviously the arbiter would have to exercise some discretion (ie check whether there was a valid reason for the lateness) rather than applying the penalty automatically, but if it was just due to oversleeping/not being bothered etc., I can't see any reasonable objection to an automatic default. Can you envisage, for instance, a tennis player not being present on court at the scheduled start time for a match, his opponent serving four aces to an empty court then waiting around for half an hour for him to turn up and start his service game?

The point is, the rules are there for everyone, not just the top 20 Grandmasters in the world.

[Michael Jones]

Then why do individual leagues, tournaments etc. have their own regulations? I'm not suggesting that it should be enshrined in the laws of chess, only enforced in tournaments where it's appropriate. The "no draw offers" rule, for instance, is clearly not there for everyone - it's only applied at tournaments where the organisers wish to make it clear to the players that they're being paid to play full length games of chess, not to bash out 15 moves of theory and have the rest of the day off.

[IM Jack Rudd]

The Turkish guy is not only in favour of zero default times, but wanted to propose a system of fines for late arrivals.

I can kind of see his point ... Obviously at the level where some of us rely on public transport to get to the playing venue and others may have a car but a lousy set of directions (or an incompetent navigator), we may have good reason for being late, but at an invitational tournament where players are being paid an appearance fee, and are probably staying either in the same building as the playing hall or somewhere very close by, not being ready to play at the appointed time is plain bad manners - to the organisers, sponsors and spectators, not to mention the opponent. Obviously the arbiter would have to exercise some discretion (ie check whether there was a valid reason for the lateness) rather than applying the penalty automatically, but if it was just due to oversleeping/not being bothered etc., I can't see any reasonable objection to an automatic default. Can you envisage, for instance, a tennis player not being present on court at the scheduled start time for a match, his opponent serving four aces to an empty court then waiting around for half an hour for him to turn up and start his service game?

The point is, the rules are there for everyone, not just the top 20 Grandmasters in the world.

Yes, that. In general, people going to chess events want to play games of chess, and rules should generally cater for this desire. It's fine for some competitions to want to be stricter on this - but this should be a competition-level rule, not a general rule.

(I once turned up for a game more than an hour late, and my opponent could have claimed the default, but didn't:

[Event "CCF Christmas International 09 - Chall"]
[Site "CCF"]
[Date "2009.12.18"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Rudd, Jack"]
[Black "Sanders, Isaac"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "2296"]
[BlackElo "1777"]
[PlyCount "73"]
[EventDate "2009.12.16"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e5 6. Ndb5 d6 7. Bg5 a6 8.
Na3 b5 9. Nd5 Be7 10. Bxf6 Bxf6 11. c3 Bg5 12. Nc2 O-O 13. a4 bxa4 14. Rxa4 a5
15. b4 Bd7 16. b5 Ne7 17. Nce3 Be6 18. Nxe7+ Qxe7 19. Nd5 Qd8 20. Bc4 Kh8 21.
O-O f5 22. exf5 Rxf5 23. Bd3 Rf8 24. Be4 Rc8 25. c4 Bxd5 26. Bxd5 Qb6 27. Qe1
Rf6 28. Qxa5 Qd4 29. Qa7 Be3 30. fxe3 Rxf1+ 31. Kxf1 Rf8+ 32. Bf3 Qd1+ 33. Kf2
Rxf3+ 34. gxf3 Qd2+ 35. Kg3 Qe1+ 36. Kh3 Qf1+ 37. Kg3 1/2-1/2

I ended up winning the tournament, with half a point more than him - you can decide for yourself whether he made the right decision.)

[Roger de Coverly]

If I turn up for work late I don't get paid for the time I'm not there, and if I did it on a regular basis I'd no doubt get fired.

If I turn up at the pub late but within opening hours, they won't refuse service. For most of us, chess is a leisure not a work activity and I, for one, would invoke the spirit of Fischer and flatly refuse to take part in any competition with a zero time default.

If you've paid thousands of pounds, dollars or Euros to assemble a world class field for a chess competition why would you want to prevent them playing for being a minute or two late at the board? It's not a hypothetical question as Luke was late one day in last year's London Chess Classic (without being defaulted).

Many other sports have leeway on start times, the Wimbledon Ladies Champion of last year was late on court on her way to the title without being defaulted.

[Roger de Coverly]

I'm not suggesting that it should be enshrined in the laws of chess

The point is that the now re-elected FIDE president and his cronies did (or do). The wording is now that competitions are still mostly free to choose their own default times - but it took a clever piece of political process to prevent it making the Laws of Chess unadulterated.

[Roger de Coverly]

Tromso has been awarded the 2014 Olympiad.

http://tromso2014.no/

[Michael Jones]

Ah, apologies for that; I'd evidently misunderstood the situation. For the record, I think there's a tendency to over-legislate in general; obviously certain basics need to be set out in a universal set of rules to make sure we're all actually playing the same game, but when it comes to areas which are more playing regulations than actual rules of the game (penalties for lateness, mobile phone noise etc.) there's no clear 'one rule fits all', and individual organisers/league committees are in a better position to decide what's best for their event than some bunch of dogsbodies at FIDE whom I somehow doubt have ever had to take two buses on a not particularly reliable network to get to some venue in the middle of nowhere for a local league match.

I was at one day of the LCC last year when one player (Howell I think) was late - Malcolm Pein made some smart remark about him probably still being in bed, but there was no actual penalty. Most local leagues I've known have half an hour or thereabouts as the default time, but even then it usually isn't enforced, since most people actually prefer to play a game of chess rather than claim a free point but have nothing to do for the rest of the evening (and have their opponent, who's probably already had a pretty frustrating journey, then arrive to find it's also been entirely wasted). I was later than that for one game last season thanks to the aforementioned unreliable bus network, but my opponent chose not to claim (I'd warned my captain that I was going to be late).

[Michael Jones]

Tromso has been awarded the 2014 Olympiad.

http://tromso2014.no/

Sounds good; I've never been there but I'm assured it's a lovely place, and I've no doubt that they'll be more than capable of running a successful event.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Article on Michael Adams here:

http://www.ugra-chess.com/node/480

"Michael Adams is one of the few people who are not offended by their nicknames – "Spiderman", it fully reflects the style of the Grandmaster. Despite his fame, he remains a simple and responsive guy. But it is only in life, and at the board his creed is one hundred percent calmness."

Followed by questions and answers in a short interview.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Tromso has been awarded the 2014 Olympiad.

http://tromso2014.no/

And here:

http://www.ugra-chess.com/node/470

I suppose it will be on the FIDE website at some point as well.

[Michael Jones]

Article on Michael Adams here:

http://www.ugra-chess.com/node/480

"Michael Adams is one of the few people who are not offended by their nicknames – "Spiderman", it fully reflects the style of the Grandmaster. Despite his fame, he remains a simple and responsive guy. But it is only in life, and at the board his creed is one hundred percent calmness."

Followed by questions and answers in a short interview.

"- Do you like talking to journalists?

– It depends. Sometimes they ask you very inappropriate questions concerning very personal and intimate things. Obviously, I do not answer such questions."

Nothing like dropping a subtle hint, is there?

[Alex Holowczak]

That interview reads as though his answers were translated into Russian for the Russian interviewer, then translated back into English for the website.

[Richard Bates]

Surely "most people" don't take offence at their nicknames?

[Mark Howitt]

I think that remark by Mickey was the most aggressive I've ever seen him be in an interview, lol.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

That interview reads as though his answers were translated into Russian for the Russian interviewer, then translated back into English for the website.

Most of the articles on that website have lost in translation issues. Which is usually quite endearing, but you have to be careful sometimes and realise that they might not mean what they are saying. Hopefully the official FIDE documents and announcements on the FIDE website (which this is not, it is the Olympiad website) are translated to a higher standard (though that is more expensive) - is the language of the FIDE bureaucracy still English or French (based in Geneva), I can't remember which.