Scottish Chess Championship Day 4 - The True Sportsman

Tonight's topic pics itself.  Sportsmanship.  Chess they say is the sport of Gentlefolk.  It is supposed to be a model of decorum and tranquillity (to quote one of my favourite musicals).  Recent times, I have spent many hours working with the FIDE Anti-Cheating Commission on the darker side of chess.  Today, I am pleased to report on one of the most remarkable acts of sportsmanship I have come across as an arbiter.

The person in question is Rabinda Paul.  Rabinda cannot go any higher in my estimation.  During his game, while his opponent was away from the board, he picked up a piece (a bishop) to make a move.  Moving that piece essentially would have lost him the game.  Rabindas' reaction was to resign, wait for his opponent to return to the board and explained that he had touched the piece and made the move he was going to make while they were away.

Bishop picked up leading to loss of game

Exemplary sportsmanship!

The heat in the hall was horrific today.  You could tell, even our foreign contingent were seen flocking round the open door (after we had the alarm disabled) fanning themselves with their scoresheets.  The other way we could tell was by how quickly the games finished.  No one (including the Arbiters) wanted to sit in the hall for any more time than was necessary.  Imagine the look of surprise when GM Colin McNab strolls in wearing a jacket as cool as a cucumber!  Hopefully he will tell us his secret.

Dundee is a strange place at times.  After play had finished and we had packed up for the day, we headed down to the local Weatherspoons for our evening meal.  Generally there are 5 of us of an evening (or what's left of it) Alex, Alan, David, Howard and myself.  Last night we were joined by Craig Pritchett.  We are sitting there eating our meals when we could hear gigging behind us.  Next thing a young lady rushes past.  Snatches my glass of beer and runs out of the place laughing.  I wouldn't mind but I had my phone sitting next to the glass, a backpack with a couple of thousand of pounds worth of equipment sitting next to me and Alan had his camera fairly close (quite a nice one I may add).  Snatch and grab for a beer?  I am definitely not in Glasgow!   (I won't go into what the reaction would have been had it been one of the expensive items, needless to say I have a very strong throwing arm....).  On the plus side, the staff were horrified when Alex told them and instantly returned with a new one for me!

Dundee is a strange strange place :D