Not waking your opponent
This weekend, I was at a tournament. Saturday was not nice, I got just one win out of three, in the first game. Second game was a loss against Vladimir Danek, in a position that was impossible to lose. So third game was an automatical loss too (you know, totally demotivated). Then I didn’t sleep much, so I was pretty tired on Sunday morning.
I came ten minutes late to the game, and mercilessly removed ten minutes from my opponent’s clock too (with assistance of the referee). I was tired, I needed the win and I didn’t feel like playing. Moreover, I didn’t know where he slept. So, I didn’t go to wake him up, I didn’t really care, I just checked the game room regularly to see if he arrived. The hour passed without him arriving and I won on time.
Later it turned out that he was sleeping in the same gym where I slept too…
I can understand it if some people are angry with me. I can understand it if they despise me. But did I do anything wrong by not doing anything? To be sincere, I’m not sure.
Here, let me defend myself:
- I was tired and didn’t feel like playing.
- I didn’t know where he was and didn’t feel obliged to try to find out.
- Losing on time like this has happened to me too.
- Few months ago I lost a game to this very guy because of ING time – I had to pay 2 points for time and lost by 1.5 … I think that ING time is flawed and it shouldn’t count towards EGF rating… this was kind of a compensation.
Who am I explaining this to? Probably I’m explaining it to myself too… I’m not sure I believe my explanation though…
5 thoughts on “Not waking your opponent”
cichacz 2007-03-01
You havn’t done anything wrong. He overslept for a game so it’s his fault he lost. Don’t even bother yourself with this kind of doubts :).
ouigkmy 2007-03-03
Well, whatever has happened to you in the past is irrelevant when it comes to judging this situation. Also, “needing a win” – I guess everyone “needs” to win. Sure, it’s his “fault”, and it’s no question of moral blame or anything. It’s just plain not very nice, not to mention unsportsmanlike ;p
But yeah, we cannot be nice all the time…
Actually I think removing 10 minutes from the clock of your opponent is much worse – if I understood correctly, it’s you who came late, so what justifies removing your opponent’s time?
tasuki 2007-03-03
The rules say that time goes for both players simultaneously until one of them arrives.
So if you are black and come to the game later, you ask the people who were there if your opponent had appeared and if not, you set his clock accordingly. If you are white, you should set your clock to the same time that black had at the time of your arriving (although I think I’ve never actually seen that).
It’s completely reasonable and fair rule, actually it’s not even unusual :-)
ouigkmy 2007-03-03
Aha I see, it’s when none of the players are there.. makes sense actually, thx :)
Thomas 2007-03-05
Well, I played the next round with the same opponent and he continued to sleep (must be really tired ;) ). I was disappointed because I wanted to play with him. Nevertheless, I did not try to find him because I just did not know where he could be and why he did not come – all others were already playing so I could not disturb and ask if someone knows something about him. I was lucky – finally he arrived and beated me badly … It happend to me (twice if I remember) that I overslept sunday morning, nobody waked me up and I apologized to my opponent because it was only my fault.
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