Player Bans / Suspensions / Sanctions

Hello,


The topic of player sanctions hasn't been discussed much, if at all for a long time. I have recently had some conversations with other arbiters and organizers on this subject. It arose from, primarily, players dropping out of tournaments / forfeiting games. It has become mainstream that anyone can drop out of a Swiss tournament, provided they notify the organizer prior to the next pairings being made. This is acceptable as far as in, the player won't get paired, nobody sits around waiting for an opponent who isn't coming.
Withdrawing from a Round Robin is far more detrimental, since it completely jeopardizes the integrity of the tournament. Players need to know that, upon registration, they're making a long-term commitment.
The most common cases of forfeits come from people "just not showing up" without letting us know they have withdrawn, in Swiss tournaments, since Round Robins are less common.

I have began instituting suspensions on players who are culprits of the above scenarios. But this is somewhat new and questionable territory. At least open for debate, I'd think.
In my opinion, this should be observed and administered by the overarching chess body, in this case CFC.

There are many different types of reasons for consideration when sanctioning a player. Ranging from incorrect withdrawals (as mentioned above), to cheating, to inappropriate etiquette, breaking of specific types of rules, unsportsmanship behavior, etc...

Some questions that I'd value other opinions on:

A.1 - should CFC / provincial / regional chess political bodies be the one overviewing these sanctions?
A.2 - if so, would / should these be compiled and honoured by various organizers?
A.3 - if not: what's stopping / is it right for a guilty party to just keep doing this across the board, since organizers are applying sanctions independently?
A.4 - if not: do organizers still need to allow players to participate, when organizing a national / local open championship (ie Canadian Open, City Championship, Provincial Rapid) ?

B - should this information be public?

C - How do you deal with these situations regarding a minor?

D - What kind of penalties should be applied? Obviously it would vary from offense to offense.

E - Is this / why is this not already being done? If so, can anyone share their methods?

F - Should this even be done? Not worth pursuing? We're not organized enough? Don't care?

G - Feel free to share Canadian examples (no need for names) where this has happened, which sanctions administered for what offense, why or why not, and which related challenges arose.


Thanks,


Alex Ferreira

Excellent topic for discussion Alex. I believe dealing with these matters should be localized. In tournament description you specify "failure to provide a sufficient enough reason (i.e Covid symptoms) for missing the tournament will result in a penalty fee of $40. Specialist Doctors are doing it all the time, I am going to a Specialist soon and I got this note about penalty. I wonder how they charge the money if the person misses...And then maybe take it up higher to us and Bob can put a note on profile that the person missed. In my opinion, this should be applied to big tournaments only.
How does FIDE deal with these cases?

For a round-robin event, why not charge a deposit of $50 or $100? The player gets it back after completing all his games (or providing a doctor's note). I've seen this done in the past.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Olga Mushtaler

Excellent topic for discussion Alex. I believe dealing with these matters should be localized. In tournament description you specify "failure to provide a sufficient enough reason (i.e Covid symptoms) for missing the tournament will result in a penalty fee of $40. Specialist Doctors are doing it all the time, I am going to a Specialist soon and I got this note about penalty. I wonder how they charge the money if the person misses...And then maybe take it up higher to us and Bob can put a note on profile that the person missed. In my opinion, this should be applied to big tournaments only.
How does FIDE deal with these cases?

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Hi Olga,
I don't know how / think FIDE deals with these. FIDE leaves it up to the national federations. In Canada / USA, this seems surprisingly common (people withdrawing) and accepted. To the point that, so long as people advise us in time and prevent them from being paired, that should be fine. However, withdrawing from Round Robins, or from Swisses without notifying the organizing, still happens some and really should not. From people who I've talked to from other countries, people just know not to do this. In some cases, their federations deal with the adequate sanctions. With that said, most countries are smaller than Canada, so in our case regionalization might make sense.

Hugh,
A deposit is not a bad idea. But we'd have to apply it to all participants, not to discriminate, and this is a major nuisance. Or if we're doing it only with past offenders, then why would we be allowing them to play in the first place? Some people might not care about the money, it's not viable for us to charge such a large deposit, and the tournament could be ruined again (by the same person) and we'd be hard pressed to justify it.

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I don't think money / financial penalties are the solution. Feels like we're letting the rich getting away with it.


Alex Ferreira

RR - no experience. I assume that they really have a flaw with the length and not much commitment from club players. A different situation with a week length day-by-day play "higher level" event. Here unless someone has emergency or medical issue, most likely none will drop out.
If there would be more RR and more troubled players - probably the list of them by organizer would help to feed players.

Swiss - I think I had couple players who did not finish and did not announce about leaving from the tournament. "Fortunately" I have not seen them anymore in our tournaments. Due to rarity of occasions, and with educating about "byes", I don't see much need to do anything more seriously.
If someone does not show up at the club, we try to shuffle pairings to have a game, don't pair the bad for the next round - seems that works.