Fundraiser details here! Registration ends at 9 a.m.: please arrive a half-hour early!
Saturday night, it's the 2010 Illinois Blitz Championship!! Registration ends at 6 p.m.: please arrive a half-hour early! Both events are at the Student Union of Northeastern Illinois University, close to both the Edens and the Kennedy. You'll find detailed directions here.
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And here's a campus map.
Parking is free if you park on the 3rd or 4th floor of the campus parking garage only. If you can't make it on Saturday (as I write, that's tomorrow!) please consider making donations to both these worthy causes. You can donate to the Chicago Blaze on their homepage. Glenn Panner tells you why you should.
To donate to the Warren Junior Program, make checks payable to: Illinois Chess Association, Inc. and mail them to:
ICA Warren Junior Program
Carl Dolson, ICA Treasurer
6021 N Wickwood Rd
Peoria, IL 61614
Do you prefer credit cards? I'll put up a link to the ICA's PayPal address shortly.
Donations to the Warren Junior Program may be tax-deductible; donations to the Chicago Blaze won't be deductible in the general case. As always, ask your tax advisor.
This tax advisor will make a donation in lieu of attending the daytime fundraiser. But you'll see me there tomorrow night, pushing pawns at the blitz!
5 comments:
This tournament was very poorly run. Kids were allowed to run around and yell during regular play in the tournament room, and the TD did nothing about that, even after being asked by one of the players. Several players had to stand up and stop the kids themselves.
One or two of the players were using move recording devices to run variations during OTB play, which is illegal. Rounds were very loosely started with no signal, except for Round 3 where players were told to stop playing so announcements could be made.
I won't be back.
I was not there for the daytime event. The blitz event was very well run and everyone seemed to be having fun.
I have never seen anyone openly using move recording devices to run variations. (This is impossible on the MonRoi; iPhone apps etc are not approved for USCF play.) If you saw someone doing this, you should have notified the TD immediately.
If the MonRoi is the white thing, then yes it is possible. You can plug in your move, then an opponent's move, as far as you want...then undo them all and try another look with different moves. There is no chess engine to advise you, but you can still visualize different lines on the screen as opposed to in your head.
And yes, it was being done at the tournament, and I suspect it's done often. At another game, a player lost on time but his clock immediately reset to 20 minutes, so the opponent did not realize it. Since observers are discouraged from advising players on time control issues, there was no way to tell him this.
TDs are going to have to become more sensitive to the abuses that can occur with digital technologies. This particular tournament did not have a strong TD presence -- no-one laid out the rules before we all started -- so the atmosphere was ripe for it.
Eric Martin
As the TD, and being on site, I really dispute the first characterization.
If someone was using a Monroi improperly, going ahead to look at variations, then their opponent should have called the TD over. I was in the room, it never happened.
Kids were running and making noise outside in the hallway, yes, but not in the playing room, and since the noise did not carry into the playing room, I was fine with that.
It was announced when pairings were posted, as well as when players should start. I apologize for having laryngitis and not barking out information louder. I suspect that the original poster hasn't played very much because they rounds aside from a slight delay prior to round 1 started promptly, and the event was rated before players even were able to get home. That is not the sign of a poorly run event.
Eric, your comments are certainly more valid. My style is more laid back than many TDs, the tournament is not about me, it is about playing chess, and I am not going to butt into a game in most cases unless I am called to make a ruling. USCF believes so strongly in doing this that their official policy in National events is the same (called non-interference). Bottom line is though, players have to make their own claims. Which rules should I have announced in your opinion?
Glenn
I've been told that the MonRoi can indeed be used that way, and without the networked hub (which I haven't seen outside of national events, CCA events, some NACA events, and one MCA FIDE event), there's no practical way for the TD to monitor players' use of the MonRoi. Having said that, it strikes me as an incredibly inefficient use of time & an incredibly conspicuous method of cheating.
I would not want to ban opening books from the tournament hall just because a cheater might open them. But just as I would lodge a complaint with the TD if my opponent consulted openings books, so too would I lodge a complaint if I found a player in another game cheating in this fashion. Ethics matter.
So too with the MonRoi. A good TD will intervene when necessary (and Glenn is certainly a good TD), but he's not going to do so without sufficient proof.
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