Chess Tournament Pet Peeves

1. People who, on move 15, offer a draw because "this same position was agreed drawn by Reti and Bogolubow during their game played in 1919".

2. People who, when giving check, can't resist the urge to utter "check" in a voice loud enough to be heard by the people at the check-in desk.

3. People who use 30 minutes of clock to decide between one of two legal moves that they have (one of which leads to mate in 3, the other to mate in 4).

4. People who think that when they put headphones in their ear, it creates some kind of vacuum through which no sound can escape, and they are free to crank it up to full volume without disturbing others.

5. People who think that the tournament director's administrative note about turning off cellphones or puting them on vibrate, doesn't apply to them.

6. People who jump in line to have their game analyzed by the featured Grandmaster without first playing through their game once to make sure they recorded it correctly, so the rest of us have to sit through, "Then I played here....no, wait, this is wrong. My bishop wasn't down there, it was up here. And my queen was......not even on the board. Oh, and I didn't castle there, I castled there."

7. People who try to insist that you use their board since they're Black, despite the fact that their board has red and white squares and the pieces look like they came from a $5 Pressman set.


Please feel free to add your own.

When i took someone's pawn en passant. He looked surprised. When i explained what en passant was he said, "I thought that had to be agreed upon at the beginning of the game."

Originally posted by buddy2
When i took someone's pawn en passant. He looked surprised. When i explained what en passant was he said, "I thought that had to be agreed upon at the beginning of the game."

People who are winning, lose their queens and feel justified in offering a draw. Then get insulted when you tell them to shove it. These same people babble on mindlessly after the game is over about how they should have won.

I don't actually have any. I've come to terms with the fact that there are morons out there and we're just going to have to deal with them as they come.

I have another one: people who constantly "j'adoube" your pieces to death.

Thank you all for your ideas, I will try them the next tournament I'm playing.

Originally posted by Natural Science
2. People who, when giving check, can't resist the urge to utter "check" in a voice loud enough to be heard by the people at the check-in desk.

just ignore those things, and they will turn to your advantage. anything besides the opponent thinking about the position will. and there's a good chance that you getting bothered is just the thing he's after. getting angry is stupid, and will only make you lose focus. and then it'll be you hitting the brick wall. hard.

Anybody besides me hates digital clocks, especially when the batteries go dead and no one has a spare.

I hate analog clock because of their ticking. With the cell phone thing. We had a guy whose phone went off and he was kicked out and forced to resign the game even though he was completely winning! next time he'll learn.

Originally posted by zakkwylder
People who are winning, lose their queens and feel justified in offering a draw. Then get insulted when you tell them to shove it. These same people babble on mindlessly after the game is over about how they should have won.