Scott Kuehl apologizes regarding adjournment at Horse and Buggy tournament

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Due to the tournament site at the Horse and Buggy Open closing earlier than anticipated at 11 pm on the Saturday, one of the games between Eugene Hua and Henry Liu had to be adjourned in the second round at 7 pm to allow the third round to get under way. The organizer Scott Kuehl sent the Hua's a letter of apology for the unexpected adjournment and ensuing problems. He graciously offered the Hua's a free entry into the next tournament which he organizes in Elmira.

The Hua's asked that the apology be made public and that is the purpose of this post.

The organizer (Scott Kuehl) and chief arbiter (Hal Bond) only learned of the closing time at 6:30 pm which meant that the third round needed to get under way so that there weren't additional adjournments. Due to Eugene's round three game also going late the adjournment was scheduled to take place on the following morning.

Scott does not have a CFC forum account and so I am posting this for him at his request. I converted the PNG file that I received to a JPG file so that it fits under the file size restrictions on the CFC forums site.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

There is much confusion even among experienced players on the subject of adjournments.

Adjournments are still very much a part of chess and can be invoked in situations like this where one game is going much later than the others and delaying the start of a round.

You will not see adjournments in a norm tournament but you can see them in other tournaments like the Horse and Buggy Open or any weekender where there are two or three rounds in a day and no norms at play.

The game in question was a rook and bishop versus rook ending which is a theoretical draw but in practice it is not easy to hold if you don't know the theory well. If the weaker side king is confined to the edge of the board it is usually a win for the stronger side as demonstrated in various endgame manuals. Even 2700 players have been known to mess this ending up. In all the examples I have seen in Canadian and Michigan tournaments, the side with the extra bishop has won.

[Gary Hua]

Eugene was FORFEITED by IA Hal Bond on round 2 because he refused to play the adjourned game the next morning as he did not agree to it as the players could look up the engine to analyze the game. It was a theoretical draw end game.

Thank you Vlad and Scott


Debby