In sports, ignorance of rules cannot be a reason to plead for mercy. On Thursday, the hugely experienced K. Humpy tried to do exactly that, but in vain.
In an incident that is not going to help her reputation, the Grandmaster pleaded ignorance of the much-followed time-control rules and appealed against the verdict after she was declared ‘lost on time’ in a winning position against Himanshu Sharma in the fourth round of the Commonwealth chess championship.
Third incidentInterestingly, this is the third such incident this month involving illustrious players.
In the ongoing Norway Chess 2015, world champion Magnus Carlsen lost his game after running out of his allotted time on the chess-clock in a winning position against Veselin Topalov.
A couple of days ago, Tania Sachdev was declared lost in the first round here.
Since the rules of the championship, announced three months ago, clearly state that each player would be given 90 minutes plus a 30-second increment (for each move made) to finish the game, Humpy’s argument that the arbiter erred in his judgement didn’t hold water.
She ran out of time on the 43rd move and was declared lost on time. She chose to appeal against the verdict.
The five-member appeals committee, comprising overseas players headed by veteran Pakistan IM Mahmood Lodhi, expectedly, turned down the appeal.
Onus on playerThe committee held that the onus of being aware of the rules was with the player. In this case, where a copy of the rules was pasted even outside the tournament hall, Humpy should have known better, the committee felt.
In her appeal, Humpy indicated an arbiter with better communicative skills should have been appointed.
Further, she had expressed her wish to withdraw from the competition should the appeal be turned down. Apparently, this was seen as a ‘threat’ by the committee members in a bid to influence the verdict in her favour.
Abhijeet among leadersLost in the din was the fact that seven players headed by top seed Abhijeet Gupta shared the lead.
Also commendable was the effort of Kerala’s young talent Athul Krishna who held seventh seed Aravindh Chithambaram, presently the country’s youngest GM.
The results: Fourth round: Ramnath Bhuvanesh (3) lost to Abhijeet Gupta (4); K. Humpy (3) lost to Himanshu Sharma (4); N.R. Visakh (3.5) drew with Deep Sengupta (3.5).
M.R. Lalith Babu (4) bt N.R. Vignesh (3); Sahaj Grover (4) bt S. Nitin (3); M. Karthikeyan (4) bt Nicholas van der Nat (RSA, 3); Harsha Bharathakoti (3.5) drew with Abhijit Kunte (3.5); N. Sanjay (3.5) drew with Ankit Rajpara (3.5); Dhulipalla Bala Chandra Prasad (3) lost to Arghyadip Das (4).
Niaz Murshed (BD, 4) bt Saurabh Anand (3); S. Athul Krishna (3.5) drew with Aravindh Chithambaram (3); Mehar Chinna Reddy (2.5) lost to Ziaur Rahman (BD, 3.5); Deepan Chakkravarthy (3.5) bt Phiri Richmond (Zam, 2.5).
S.L. Narayanan (3.5) bt Nitish Belurkar (2.5); Nisha Mohota (2.5) lost to Saptarshi Roy (3.5); Padmini Rout (3) drew with Rajdeep Sarkar (3).
Krishna Teja (3) drew with R.R. Laxman (3); Ivana Furtado (3) drew with Ravi Teja (3); Sriram Jha (3.5) bt Vinay Kumar Matta (2.5); Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury (3.5) bt Lakshmi Narayanan (2.5).
