Fencer: Filip,

As you know when you started your own site, at one point there were some problems with BrainKing being up all of the time. On GothicChessLive.com there are similar "growing pains." In the case of the SMIRF operator, I believe he is the one who was experiencing problems disconnecting. The site does not have a feature to automatically restore games so it is up to the players to do so.

Reinhard was asking his opponent so start the clocks with less time than he had when they left, because a Fischer "+25 seconds" was added with each move. His opponent did not have a move list displayed, so he needed Reinhard to relay the moves. His opponent wanted to start the clocks where they were, and just let any added time to run down before the next move was made. Reinahrd did not want to do this. His opponent finally gave in to his requests and they replayed the game. Reinhard typed a wrong move once, so they had to start over. Reinahrd made a wrong move when he was entering his own move, so there was a need to start over again. All during this, it was Reinahrd's turn to move in a difficult position, so SMIRF could have been searching. So, his opponent said "since so much time elapsed since my move, what is the SMIRF move?" At this point it was 7 minutes since his opponent had moved. It should be noted this opponent also had a 12 minute time advantage with less than half an hour left in the game. SMIRF refused to say what move he had made. Finally, the game was restored, and because of the relaying of moves by typing and the request to start with less time, SMIRF had 11 minutes more on his clock that at the time of the disconnect, and his opponent has 4 minutes less than was on his clock. His opponent was typing up a suggestion when SMIRF offered a draw. Since the position was finally restored correctly, his opponent did not accept the draw. Again, I remind all that SMIRF has more time on his clock, the opponent less, and it was still SMIRF's turn to move. And what did SMIRF do? He resigned.

SMIRF also resigned a game in a tough position against Zillions when a disconnect occurred, but this disconnect was the server losing its connection so it was not his fault. It is strange that all of these resignations occurred after SMIRF lost a 109 move game to the ChessV program which you can see here: http://www.gothicchesslive.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=444

This basically eliminated SMIRF's chances of winning the event, despite scoring 1-1 against last year's winner, Gothic Vortex. SMIRF also left a previous game in progress against ChessV, which Ed Trice declared a draw though it is clear SMIRF had a real chance to lose this game too as it was behind in time and its evaluation was overly optimistic. This same over-optimism cost SMIRF an easy draw in that 109 move game, ChessV mentioned several times that the game was a draw, and all such implicit offers were refused by Reinhard. He played on, then lost, then this behavior of "quitting to save face" emerged.

SMIRF has also done the same thing to me here on BrainKing. When I was playing in the World Open last year, I took some vacation days. I made a few moves against other opponents, but did not make move #1 against him at the start of a finals section, and he resigned his game against me and the other player in the finals section who WAS NOT even on vacation!

I mention this so you have a fuller version of the story and know more about Reinhard. When he does not get his way, he quits.