A few days after the University team event finished, I was entering games from the event onto chess5.com. It was only then that I realized there had been a bizarre situation in the last round, which had completely slipped the notice of both Chief Arbiter Hal Bond and I as Deputy Arbiter.
Here's what happened: the final round pairing on the top match had Western, the top seed, with 4 match points, as White (on boards one and three) playing Dalhousie, the second seed, with 2.5 match points, with White on boards two and four. Dalhousie was the highest-placed team which Western had not already played, having already defeated (in order) Carleton, Waterloo A, Guelph, and Toronto A. The game between FM Raja Panjwani (Western's top board) and NM Gary Ng (Dalhousie's top board) ended in a quick draw. In fact, it turned out what had happened was Ng took the White pieces (he should have played Black), played his standard move 1.b4, then offered a draw, which was accepted, or it may have been Panjwani who offered the draw. No matter (and the fact of the short draw also bothers me quite a bit, but that is not my main point here). I didn't learn of this until some time later. As the match progressed, I noticed that FM Jonathan Tayar was playing Black on board two for Western against 2157-rated Jonathan Gottlieb of Dalhousie; this game continued for several hours, with Tayar eventually winning a solid victory. (That game is on chess5.com.) So, Western had Black on their top two boards. This is a major error, but one which we did not notice until too late. The match wound up drawn, which allowed Dalhousie to pull into a second-place tie with Guelph, Toronto A, Waterloo A, and Queen's, once play was completed.
I would like NM Gary Ng to either post his explanation of what happened in this final-round match on this site, or to contact me with his explanation at this address: frankd_chess@hotmail.com.
Here's what happened: the final round pairing on the top match had Western, the top seed, with 4 match points, as White (on boards one and three) playing Dalhousie, the second seed, with 2.5 match points, with White on boards two and four. Dalhousie was the highest-placed team which Western had not already played, having already defeated (in order) Carleton, Waterloo A, Guelph, and Toronto A. The game between FM Raja Panjwani (Western's top board) and NM Gary Ng (Dalhousie's top board) ended in a quick draw. In fact, it turned out what had happened was Ng took the White pieces (he should have played Black), played his standard move 1.b4, then offered a draw, which was accepted, or it may have been Panjwani who offered the draw. No matter (and the fact of the short draw also bothers me quite a bit, but that is not my main point here). I didn't learn of this until some time later. As the match progressed, I noticed that FM Jonathan Tayar was playing Black on board two for Western against 2157-rated Jonathan Gottlieb of Dalhousie; this game continued for several hours, with Tayar eventually winning a solid victory. (That game is on chess5.com.) So, Western had Black on their top two boards. This is a major error, but one which we did not notice until too late. The match wound up drawn, which allowed Dalhousie to pull into a second-place tie with Guelph, Toronto A, Waterloo A, and Queen's, once play was completed.
I would like NM Gary Ng to either post his explanation of what happened in this final-round match on this site, or to contact me with his explanation at this address: frankd_chess@hotmail.com.
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