Untitled Ding Liren won the 2009 Chinese Championship when Wang Hao collapsed at the end. He lost his last 2 games when holding a 1.5 point lead with 2 rounds to go! One of his two losses was to the eventual winner Ding Liren.
The championship ended in a dramatic fashion when the untitled player 16 year old Ding Liren (2458) won the championship because his last round’s opponent GM Zhou Jianchao (2635) was defaulted for arriving at the board late.
GM Wang Hao 2696 still could have won with the final round victory with white pieces. But he lost back to back games, this time to GM Li Shilong (2557).
GM Hou Yifan also lost one of her games for arriving to her table 5 seconds late! This is the new FIDE rule.
Source: http://blog.sina.com.cn/chessnews
Final standings:
This new FIDE rule is ridiculous!
This new FIDE rule is great!
Just arrive late to an athletics event…..
why can’t chessplayers get up earlier and arrive at the show in time?
People pay money…
look out for extreme talented Liren, He will become a chess superstar. He and Yifan are the only two get personal training from Jiangchuan Ye, General Coach of Chinese Chess Team.
The Chinese source blog’s article shows the clock at 14:01:47, then a second picture where the arbiter defaults Ding Liren’s opponent. It is not clear whether the arbiter waited until 5 minutes past the hour.
In any event, if chess is imitating other professional sports in having such a rule, then chess also needs to legislate a “warmup period” as these other sports have. This can be officially for pregame photos, visiting dignitaries, and the like. This should start on the hour, and last 5-10 minutes. Eventually the warmup period should be mandatory, of course, but while the rule is being phased in, organizers should implement the warmup time as an official grace period.
NFL football is the only professional game I know that begins on-the-hour. Again, at least during the phase-in period, it is important that chess games have a similar buffer.
Meant to include: another aspect in which chess differs from tennis and golf in particular is the prevalence of round-robin and Swiss events. In those events, unlike knockout, a player’s results do not only affect the player. It was undue for Wang Hao that his main competitor got the free point and did not have to exert himself.
This is not reason to have lax rules, but it *is* a reason to build in buffers for applying them.
First of all, chess is absolutely nothing like Football or tennis. There is NOTHING in common. So I am sick of people comparing 2 totally different things. Secondly, this rule is probably ok for a top level game. In normal tournaments, where people spend precious money to play in the hope that they get stronger, they usually have to stay in the “unnoficial” hotels which are a bit farther. And nobody really spends money to go see those games. So the same rule cant aply for them. Also, even many other sports have a grace period, maybe 1hr is too much, but i am sure that 10-15 minutes is more than enough time….
Lesson Learned.
What rule could you have otherwise? If you allow ten minutes of grace time, then what do you do with someone that shows up ten minutes and 5 seconds too late? I have seen the same complaints about how “unfair” it is to forfeit someone who showed up 10 seconds after the grace period had elapsed.
Keep it simple, in my opinion. If the game is to start at 10:00 o’clock, then set that as the time you have to be in your chair ready to play.
Y. Ward, my point is not to have a “grace period”, but to put the official start times off the hour as a buffer. I.e. the official start time of a round would be 2:05pm, or 9:10am, etc.—and that would be a sharp deadline.
As I’ve pointed out, that is the practice in many other professional sports. Comparison to those sports has been influencing FIDE and other bodies for over a decade, so I make no apology for that.
I do agree with not having such a rule at any tournament with more than 1 round per day, which includes all weekend Swisses. There is already a rule allowing any player 1/2-hour without penalty time after the late finish of a game from the previous round. The same works for overnight. Electing to get some extra rest on one’s own time should be a prerogative of a weekend player, besides being traditional for many years.
again, there is a difference between 5secs and 10 minutes and 5 secs. Imagine if u badly need to go to the bathroom 1 min b4 starting time, u have the option of losing your point or severely embarrasing yourself….
Very much to my surprise, I find that the official Association of Tennis Professionals Rulebook provides an up-to-15-minutes grace period, with fines—though only for players who are onsite (what that means is not clear to me). To find the relevant section in ATP’s big PDF file, and word-search on “punctuality” to find the 5th usage. This takes you to Chapter VIII The Code, Section (4)–Offenses, paragraph (n)–Punctuality:
——————
n) Punctuality
Players shall be ready to play when their matches are called.
i) Any player not ready to play within ten (10) minutes after his match is called
shall be fined $250.
ii) Any player not ready to play within fifteen (15) minutes after his match is
called may be fined up to an additional $750 and shall be defaulted unless the
supervisor, after consideration of all relevant circumstances, elects not to
declare a default. In such case, the supervisor shall immediately inform the
Executive Vice President – Rules & Competition. This section applies only to
those players who are or have been on site.
Late Transportation
Case: The scheduled transportation is late to pick up players from
the tournament hotel. A player is defaulted for punctuality and subsequently
arrives on-site with tournament transportation. Should the
default be rescinded and the match played?
Decision: The player is defaulted. Transportation is a service provided
by the tournament; however, the player is responsible for arriving
on time for his match.
————————-
This surprises me. Obviously lateness to a late-round televised match would not be tolerated for general reasons, so one may interpret this as being the baseline rule for your-basic-week(end)-pro-tennis-tournament. However, the discussion certainly applies to the comparable baseline in chess, namely international FIDE-rated Swisses.
In such a context, I’ll revise my position to say that chess should not “jump over” its traditions to be more strict than comparable professional organizations.
Hence I find fault with the Chinese organizers’ implementation of the FIDE rule, both in defaulting Hou Yifan when clearly “on site”, and (per my original position) having the official start time being on the hour rather than 5 min. past.