Adjudications.

The Tournament Rules Commission has spent its summer working on a document
that we hope will be useful to all Tournament Directors, Arbiters, Tournament
Organizers and hosts, and to the players. One of the juicy topics has been Adjudications.

Before I get into the topic, I think it might be useful to explain the ICCF rule
making process. The appropriate committee discusses it proposals during the
year and presents them to Congress. That sounds simple enough, but what has
happened in the past, is that many of the committee members were not able
to come to Congress. Congress then attempted to discuss (in multiple languages),
shred, and rewrite before running out of time. The process was improved several
years ago by changing the Sunday afternoon meeting into committee meetings.
Everyone was assigned to a committee. In some cases, it was not the same one that
he may have worked on during the year. Many delegates, especially new delegates,
hadn’t worked on any committee during the year. This change did improve the process
as the Committee Chair, the Tournament Rules Commissioner, for example, could then
present his report to Congress and have at least those delegates on the Sunday
committee understand, discuss, and support the reasons for the proposals. This has helped,
but not always avoided, the shredding, rewrites, and running out of time problems.

The World Tournament Director drafted “Arbiter Rules” several years ago.
It was an extremely ambitious document filled with good ideas, but it has never
made it out of Congress. The problem was that some of those ideas should have been
handled by the Tournament Rules or the Playing Rules Committees, and some
suggestions fell in the Statutes area that is under the President’s Commission.
The Tournament Rules Committee has redrafted what we hope will be the handbook
that the Tournament Directors and Arbiters have needed. It has moved the suggested
Rules to the appropriate Rules or Statutes areas.

One of those topics dealt with Adjudications. How to avoid them, how to
handle them. ICCF tournaments in general do not have end dates. The USA
and NAPZ do use end dates. This has the advantage of the TD being able to say,
I don’t care how much time you have left, you have to finish the games by xx/xx/xx, Then we tell the players that “Max the Axe” is the Adjudicator. But, when it comes down to determining winners and titles, though, we extend the date. We haven’t been able to avoid all adjudications.

One problem is that some players think they have a win somewhere
(and sometimes they do) but they cannot find it. So they hang on in the hopes
that some GM Adjudicator will find it for them. Others think they are winning
and do not realize that they are dead lost and stalling until they try to write the
analysis to support their claim of a win. It has put a burden on Adjudicators.
They are sometimes faced with analysis that shows the player hasn’t a clue that
there is a win, maybe even a forced win, 30 moves away. There have been cases
where the player hasn’t even submitted analysis, he’s just hoped that the
Adjudicator would find the win that he’s given up trying to find. Isn’t having
some GM win the game for you just to good to be true? Yes, we think so.

This year’s attempt to solve the Adjudication problem will be along the lines
of  “the default decision is a draw.” No analysis or poor analysis means no win.
That’s all the teaser you get for now. We all have to wait for Congress to vote.