Quote:
Originally Posted by jontsef
In my last OTB tourney, the player on the board next to me did something along those lines.
He was Black and his opponent had maybe 2 minutes left (they were using an analog clock) to make time control. The position was pretty tricky and about even, and White was moving quickly but still had to make several moves to reach time control.
All of a sudden Black makes a move really quickly, slams the piece on the board, and then smacks the clock so hard that it falls over and messes up a good portion of the pieces. We were all pretty startled by the commotion. White obviously stopped the clock and they proceeded to set up the position again, but Black intentionally misplaced some of the pieces to annoy White even more.
Long story short, the tactic worked and White blundered a whole piece a move or two later and Black went on to win.
After the game the Black player told me that he did that on purpose to exasperate his opponent.
Did you punch him in the face when he told you that?
But seriously, if someone ever tried to pull that crap on me I'd
immediately get the tournament director and explain how it's way too convenient for him to "knock down the clock and scatter the pieces" when I have 2 minutes left. Of course the aim would be for being granted more time.
I think this would also give more time to distract myself from the nonsense and readjust to the game, as I'm sure the TD would take his time checking out the situation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dire
This thread is just a reminder of why live chess sucks, particularly when you don't have at least a ~30 second increment on each move. Playing live chess with no increment is simply stupid imo.
QFMFT
5 second delay <<<< 5 second increment
and it's not even close. Increment is just better, and I know that a few major tournament directors agree with me too.
So how can we get USCF to change from 5 sec. delay to increment for tournaments?
Quote:
Originally Posted by whiskeytown
Josh Watikin talked about some of this crap in his book "The Art of Learning" - some of it was very subtle -
in India, (I think) they used some archaic non-staunton pieces for the tournament - he played a bit like he was playing blindfolded and did ok
In another situation, of course, parents would talk to the kids in Russian and you could tell they were talking about the game -
My favorite story (and most interesting) was how Josh was losing now and again to a player by making a bad move in a bad spot....later a guy who knew how the Russians trained their players for dirty tricks pointed out that when it was a critical position, the player would tap a piece...and every so subtly speed up the tapping so as to subliminally affect Josh's thought process (rushing it, I suppose) - but once you know that, it should be easy to deal with -
I had read the Art of Learning,it's absolutely great btw, and I noted that tapping trick as well. It's fairly subtle so it's good to be on the look out for it.