Uganda is the first team to be forfeited at the 2008 Dresden Chess Olympiad!
As I have reported a few days ago, the Chief Arbiter and the Organizer decided to only give warnings to players / teams which were late in the first two rounds. I assume that they wanted to give the players a couple of rounds to get adjusted. However, they clearly said that they will STRICTLY enforce this rule starting round 3 and they kept their word!
In my Press Conference tonight, I will ask a member of the Technical Committee about this issue.
I now have the full story by the Technical Committee. The team from Uganda was not forfeited because they were late. What happened is only 2 players from the team were able to come to Dresden. Therefore, they played with only 2 players in the first two rounds.
However, one of the two players decided to go to his embassy to see if he can recruit 2 additional players for future rounds. According to the FIDE rules, one player cannot represent the team because it is less than 50%. Therefore, the entire team was forfeited.
What a joke.
forfeited, surely?
This rule will be hard for the Jamacian team Man.
Thats the only way some people learn.
Correct decision. They should have abolished the stupid “1 hour late” rule long time ago.
Were all 4 team members late or just some of them? I don’t recall the exact wording, but I suppose it could have been “… all 4 players must be present at the appointed time of the round…”
Surely this is a stupid rule? That was always the point of the 1-hour foreit (start your opponent’s clock)
All this will do is cause strife.
Being late is just a bad habbit, is unprofessional and is unfair and unrespectful to the opponent, fans and chess media, who only have first 5 or 10 minutes to take the photos.
Being punctual like in all serious sports is at least we can demand.
‘Being punctual like in all serious sports is at least we can demand.’
That’s a load of crap. In chess it is not important to be on time to the game. Some idiots decided to change the rules.
I’ll bet they wouldn’t forfeit Russia, Armenia, France or another European team. Immediately the rule would be changed if that happened.
They could have simply asked couple of Ugandan nationals loitering around to participate, while the other 2 players continued to mess up.