Expert: Wuyanbu Zutali - 11/24/2010

Question
Hi. I'm running a small tournament on a forum that has a chess mod to enable online games. The tournament is small but I take my role as tournament director seriously.

In the championship match, the interface malfunctioned and allowed one of the players to make an illegal move during the endgame. It is impossible to fairly finish the match as the outcome is directly affected by this malfunction. With this technology I cannot reset the move to undo the illegal move.

Should I have the participants start a new game? Or do I declare the one who made the illegal move in forfeit? Or is there another solution? This is the championship match and it seems unfair for the entire tournament to be won/lost because of a technology error leading to forfeit. What is your advice, please?

Answer
Good question!

I had to seek the advice of Joe Yun one of Ohio's best tournament directors.

Joe says:

Is it possible for them to start a new game and play the exact same moves up to the illegal move? If so then they could finish from there. If not you may have to declare the game a draw as it's the most fair thing to do involving both players. They may choose to start a new game and it's outcome would count for the tournament. Joe Yun.

As TD, you can to make the call and the players can either live with it or protest.
Or you can ask them what they think is fair.
Usually players accept the judgement of the TD if it's reasonable.

I hope this helps!