New years resolution was that I was going to keep this blog up to date. Best made plans of mice and men..
I am seen by others as an excellent organiser which makes me smile, I smile as I know that I am a graduate of the school of procrastination. Actually I am probably being unfair on myself as what tends to happen is something comes along that is even more interesting which I then focus my energies on.
The most frequent question I am asked is on computer pairings. Why is it that I have not written an algorithm that does pairings correctly? The reason for me is simple. The day that I have to rely on a computer to do my draws is the day I'll give up completely...
Anyway, to the main thrust of todays blog (which I am doing on a bus heading to the Prestwick Congress). Have you ever seen something and thought to yourself, I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that one? A good friend and arbiting mentor of mine IA Alex MacFarlane was selected to be an arbiter at the Challengers matches for the World Championships. Basically only the World Championships themselves hold higher prestige and Alex fully deserves the recognition he is given. Last week, Vladmir Kramnik was playing in a sudden death playoff. The clocks had roughly 15 seconds left and for some unknown reason, they reset themselves.
As you can imagine, chaos ensued 18 minutes later, the game resumed (not after Alex suggested to VK and the Chief arbiter that they toned it down as it as disturbing the players in his game). The story was major news in the chess world. I was so glad I did not have to deal with that one!
Fast forward a couple of days and I am the sole arbiter at the East Kilbride Open, 58 players, one arbiter. It is what I refer to as "good odds". Normally I like to have a second arbiter there as backup, but Peter was unavailable and all the others were playing so I just continued.
We are approaching the time control and I have 2 games that are in the throes of time scramble. Game 1 is Jimmy Doyle v Ian McLachlan, game 2 is Alastair Macgregor v David Congalton. David is desperately short of time and his flag is threatening to fall (in the metaphorical sense as we are using digitals). I am splitting my attention between the 2 games as at any minute I am either going to have to call flagfall or start writing moves down.
Jimmy's game went into full scramble mode, no player was recording. I start to record and glanced back at Alastairs board when I hear BLEEEEEEEEEEEP. Recognising the sound I turned round in horror to find Jimmy's clock had done a "Kramnik" and had reset!!!
Apparently I swore audibly. I have no recollection of it, but I am looking at the clock thinking "you are having a laugh!". I had missed a couple of moves as I was watching 2 games so I had to do the only thing possible, revert to the last known position and play from there.
We reconstructed the game on the board next to us and with the moves I wrote down managed to completely reconstruct the game. I awarded both players an extra minute for the disturbance and set the clocks to 16 minutes and let them play on. Total time to resolve... About 5 minutes. I also mentally noted to award myself a stiff whisky when I got in!
What are the odds of that? I have arbited over 10,000 boards and never in my arbiting career have I heard of that never mind had it happen to me and there it happens twice in a week!!
I Do Not BELIEEEEEEVE it!
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