[chessmind] Dennis Monokroussos: Great moments in chess history, telephone edition

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Posted by Dennis Monokroussos:
Great moments in chess history, telephone edition
http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/posts/1221171167.shtml


   This has already happened far too many times, but it doesn't mean that
   everyone has learned their lesson. A few days ago at the [1]Russian
   Higher League Championship, Vladimir Malakhov lost a won or nearly won
   position when his cell phone rang, but yesterday saw a new twist on
   the phone forfeit situation.
   Until a few months ago, I was under the impression that this rule was
   in effect as an anti-cheating measure, but when I asked an arbiter
   about this I discovered that I was wrong. The arbiter told us to turn
   our cell phones off or to vibrate, and when I asked about this
   discovered that the real point of the rule was to avoid distracting
   noises.
   With that in mind, [2]Nigel Short's sad plight makes more sense. Like
   Malakhov, he too had a cell phone problem, but unlike Malakhov he
   wasn't receiving a call (or a text message or whatever else one can
   receive from the latest crop of cell phones/PDAs/mini-computers).
   Enjoying a slightly better position against Ketevan Arakhamia Grant in
   something called the [3]European Union Championships (not to be
   confused with the [stronger] European Individual Championship), his
   phone went off to "helpfully" indicate a low battery! It's not that he
   could have received any useful information about his game in this way,
   but it was a distraction, and so Short accepted the loss without
   complaint. Worse still, Short was sure he had turned it off; if so,
   then if this sort of feature is going to be universal to new phones,
   then we're all in trouble.

References

   1. http://www.rcc2008.org/eng/index.htm
   2. http://www.liverpoolchessinternational.co.uk/reports/reports_rd2.htm
   3. http://www.liverpoolchessinternational.co.uk/