[tournament-org] Penalties for minor infringments ....

[Geoff Kaniuk]

On 25/10/2018 17:24, Christopher Kirkham via tournament-org wrote:
> At the Northern last Sunday, I received a complaint from 1 of the players that his opponent had taken a stone from the bowl rather than the counted-out stones during a period of Canadian overtime. In this case it was after exhausting the pile of counted-out stones, but that is, I believe, not particularly significant.
[[
Oh, I think it can make a big difference!

If your opponent takes a stone from the bowl while still having overtime 
stones to play what do you do?
A. Keep shtum and let your opponent keep playing from the bowl so that 
the flag falls while still having overtime stones to play?
B. Be kind an tell your opponent to cover the bowl?
]]

  What should I have done? Should I have awarded the game to the 
complainer? Fortunately the complainer didn't seem to require that, and 
the culprit was convincing in claiming it was inadvertent, so I warned 
the culprit not to do it again, and let the game continue.
[[
Some players may have thought that you can continue playing from the 
bowl till your flag drops and at that point you count out fresh stones.
That may have been the rule at some point in the distant past, but it no 
longer is.

Suppose the culprit is P and the complainer is Q. Q clearly detected 
that P had used all overtime stones.

What should have happened is that after P has played the last overtime 
stone and pressed the clock, it is stopped.  P then counts stones during 
which time Q resets P's clock. When P has finished counting the stones, 
P restarts the clock and Q can now play.

As ref, I certainly would not award the game to Q, unless there was 
evidence that P was repeatedly playing from the bowl while Q just did 
not notice.
]]

The complainer, who was also in byo-yomi, resigned shortly after.  The 
real question, though, is what penalties are there short of forfeiting 
the game? Is there any established system for this? If not, should we 
have a "yellow-card" and "red-card" system for such minor infringements? 
If we do that, is the scope of a "yellow-card" the game or the whole 
tournament?
[[
I think a card system can become complex to manage. In general I would 
just explain the rules again and keep an eye on the pair to see that 
they are now playing nicely.
]]

Geoff

33 Ashbury Close, Cambridge CB1 3RW 01223 710582