SA Open Report

Back in June this year, I mentioned the South African Open. It was an innovative event in that it featured players from as far as Melbourne who participated and played their games via the online chess playing site, www.chesscube.com.

Now months later, ChessCube have released a report and in it, Melbourne's IM Mirko Rujevic scores a special mention under the subheading, "Glitches":

There were only two major glitches.

On Wednesday 08‐07‐2009 in the Mirko Rujevic vs Solomons game (round 8) there was a mouse slip on move 21 by Solomons.

On move 21 Solomons, playing black, executed 21...Bxd5 on the physical board but then played 21...Bc6 on the computer. He immediately realized his mistake and called the attending arbiter while also using the online functionality (the online system notes the position and clock times of the players).

Unfortunately Rujevic also responded immediately to the move, obviously thinking he was winning and not seeing that Solomons had called the arbiter.

After the arbiters confirmed the situation between themselves, Solomons asked for a takeback which was accepted. However, for an unknown reason he could no longer move a piece after this ‐ it could be because Rujevic already replied to his mistake. This left no other course of action but to reconstruct the position, using the player's notation sheets and noted position, and reset the clock to the correct time using the noted times.

The report can be downloaded from this post on the ChessCube blog. Hat tip to Sarah Blake over there for bringing this to my attention.