Recently I was scribing some games for the Paris Open, they gave rise to 3 questions.

White is in overtime. He counts out his stones, but doesn't reset his overtime period to 5 minutes, and plays on trying to make 15 stones in 1 minute. Should I interrupt the players to tell them?

Black wins by 0.5, as White didn't hand over a pass stone. In French rules, this is supposed to be impossible. What was the result of the game? B+0.5 or B+1.5?

Is occasionally scratching your head during the game impolite?

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North Lecale

No. You are not on anybody's team.



The result of the game is the official result. The TD should catch the error. If he or she does not, you can tell him or her what happened.



I do not know about what is polite or not, but you should not distract the players.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

B+time, since white was still on the clock until handing over a stone (=

Serious question: What difference does it make in terms of pairings or tournament tiebreakers? Put in the game commentary that White forgot to hand over a pass stone. The intreesting question would be if White forgot to hand over a pass stone and the putative result was W+0.5


Not as impolite as scratching your opponent's head.

Yes. A better clock would have managed this for the players. The purpose of the time limits is not to punish those who mistakenly forget to set the clock, it is to ensure that the game proceeds in a timely manor.

Bring it to the attention of the tournament director. I think it should be B+1.5, but there's a difference between what it should be and what it is.

Not in my opinion. But I suppose it depends on how and how often you do it. The world is full of gray areas...

At least it didn't change the game result. I lost my first game of the Cambridge tournament 2 years ago by half a point playing as white. In AGA rules with 7.5 komi this is impossible (unless there are funny sekis which there weren't). As we were tidying up the stones I found a black stone to the side of the board but didn't think much of it. Then after the second round I realised parity meant black winning by half was impossible so presumably that stray stone was an extra capture and I should have won by half a point (recording the game at home afterwards confirmed this). It was now too late to change the result as far as the tournament draw was concerned, but it could have been corrected for ratings purposes, but wasn't.