From: Jeroen Tiggelman CONSUL NL> Date: 7 nov 1996 Subject: Re: Tournaments Reijer Grimbergen wrote: >Alexander Engelhardt <101536.1704 COMPUSERVE COM> wrote: >> There were two players unhappy with the pairings sorted out by the >> computer program. They had to play against each other. They >> voiced there discontentment, declared one of the two as the winner >> and left the tournament without moving one piece on the board. >>They returned the next day for the next rounds. >Personally I would prefer to exclude these players from competion >alltogether. [...] However, as a tournament leader I have never taken >such drastic steps. I also never bend to the pressure of making >another draw. If you start doing that, this means the end to objective >pairing, thus making the tournament unfair. In short, I took the same >actions as you did, but always making it clear that I strongly >disapprove of such behaviour. [...] We don't have the luxury position >of scaring players off by taking strong action against unsportmanship >behaviour... >I do not agree [that it is the privilege of each player to resign at any >moment of the game, even at the beginning]. My personal opinion is >that resigning without playing is a violation of proper tournament >conduct and should be punished accordingly. I agree with Reijer that this behaviour is improper conduct, and would draw the consequences, but I also agree that we aren't in a luxury position and indeed if we had been, an occurrence like this would have been far less likely. I am not entirely convinced that discouraging clearly unsportsmanlike behaviour would scare off players with any sense of conduct, though, but to avoid misconceptions it would be necessary to make rules of this sort very clear beforehand indeed. BTW, I was at the German Open and I am under the impression that most people there were remarkably unenthusiastic about cheering the players in question during the prize-givings... I don't think there is all that much question about the proper rules of conduct.. (nor that there should be ;-)). Fortunately, I also felt most players were there for participating, not worrying about winning and such too much... Still.. Jeroen Tiggelman Consul NL