This is going to be interesting.. Well the most surprising thing happen with me in otb is that, once my opponent offer me a draw after he blundered a queen ,i was drinking water and hearing it i couldnt stop myself laughing out loud that all the water came out from my mouth and nose.

When I went to play my first tournament when I was 12yrs old. In my first game my opponent made a illegal move that exposed his king to check, I did not realise that and the game continued for 4 more moves till I realised it and we took all our 4 moves back and the guy agreed to it.

Two of the funniest things that happened to me was I was on 3/3 in a tournament playing and about to lose my fourth round. So I sacced a Bishop, Rook and Queen before offering a draw. It was declined of course, so I made an illegal move to get out of it. By this time everyone watching was laughing their heads off. One guy dropped his coffee. It was glorious.

The second one was in a crucial last round. My opponent and I were playing for $300 each, though I was a friend of his and he didn't realise he was playing for $300 as he thought it was a rating group prize I could win. So eventually the position settled down into a bishops of opposite colours endgame where he was four (!) pawns up. He hadn't been there half the game and was moving quickly as he wanted me to win the cash, so he was low on time. He walked away with about 5 minutes while I was busy making my move in that clearly lost endgame. He came back with 10 seconds and heroicly tried to make his move, knowing of course that he wouldn't. We worked out later that he would of won $300 if he had won that endgame. I made it up the next day though, it was pretty funny. I also spilled about 300 mls of coke all over the board and the guy playing on the board next to me. It was pretty funny.

I've already posted this elsewhere:

When I was playing in the Canadian Open in Montreal back in the Seventies... in a field that included Larsen and Ljubujevic... one of the players at a nearby board blundered his Queen in the opening. As soon as his opponent captured it, the player immediately stopped the clock, got up and headed for the door. The winning player signed the score-sheet, handed it in, spent a moment or two looking at the nearby games, and then started to walk out of the tournament hall. As he reached the door, his erstwhile opponent leapt out from behind a big potted plant, kicked him in the balls, and ran away.

The tournament director phoned the police, who arrived quite quickly, wrote down what details were available... and then decided to wait for the start of the next round. Sure enough, the assailant showed up for his next-round pairing, was promptly arrested, and hauled off to jail.

I also played in a tournament at the University of Fredericton, when one of the players had a heart attack right at the board. Comment from one of his fellow players: "He was losing anyway".

lolllzzzzz

I still like to see what happens when a player forgets to push his clock.. Brings out the smaller side of character it seems. My rule is that I tell them after 10 minutes.

At a Virginia State Championship in the early '70s, four inmates from the State Pentitentiary played - in chains and under guard.  But the fireworks happened elsewhere.  An older established player, a contender with outside chances for the title, was playing a teenaged up-and-coming player, rated far under him.  It was a tense and exciting game with mutual time trouble.

The kid had long since ceased to keep score, but the veteran's flag fell and he claimed a win on time.  The director demanded the veteran's scoresheet to verify the moves made.  This was incorrect at the time, the rules stated the player claiming a time forfeit had to have a scoresheet accurate within three moves.

The veteran objected (correctly), the TD insisted.  It became animated, finally the TD cited the rule that scoresheets were the property of the organizer.  The veteran then crumpled his scoresheet, put it in his mouth, chewed vigorously, and then handed the blob to the TD, saying, "Okay, it is yours!"

All these people were friends of mine, and I tried to advise the TD of the actual rule and where to find it, but the kid's father - also an old friend - took exception, claiming I was favoring the opponent (with whom I was a close friend).  He followed me away from the argument with anger in his eyes.  He was bigger than me and looked like he was going to hit me.

Just then, the late Lev Blonarovych, a Ukranian emigre and friend of all of us, built like a fireplug:  short but bulky and in top shape - stepped in between us and stopped any further excitement.

~~~~~~~

At a tournament in Maryland in the early '70s - it was actually "the Reston (VA) Open" but the hotel hadn't  been finished in time, so it was moved - there was a fire during a round.  Players were ordered to stop their clocks and evacuate.  At one top board, the opponent refused to do so, insisting they play on! 

Smoke was actually filling the ballroom when the Fire Marshall finally made the guy leave. (It was just a kitchen fire and play resumed within about an hour).

[On Edit]:  I think Mark Diesen won that tournament.  One remarkable game was IM Tim Taylor v NM Ed Kitces, a marathon over 100 moves, ending in a draw.

It occured with my opponent 2-3 times that he forget to push his clock.. I enjoy the bonus and watching him trying to panic..

i played a tourney and went to make a move but realised that i couldn't move the piece due to a pin, so i started to think of another move when my opponent started to explain that i couldn't move my piece due to the pin. i think he really liked that move and just wanted me to know of it, so i  commented on a move that he couldn't do to give it back at him. The surprising thing is that i let his comment get to me so much i retaliated back like a kid...oh well, chess sometimes brings out the worst in people.

One very funny moment in an otb tournament was at a junior tourn, with ages ranging from 6-12. I remember the room was completely silent while people were playing, then suddenly someone shouted "HAHAHAHAHA CHECKMATE I WIN!!!!" breaking the dead silence, then the next thing, his opponent shouted back "WHAT NO IT ISN'T I AM WINNING!!!". Everybody in the room then burst out laughing, and when an arbiter went over to their board, they both started crying because everyone was looking towards them and laughing. It turned out that they were both 8-year-olds and that it was checkmate :) I don't think the room became silent again until after the round had finished!

One funny moment was when I was playing an 1800.  I was 12 at the time, and he was a much older man.  Halfway through what looked like a standard Caro-Kan, he left the board.  "No big deal, I thought, He has to use the bathroom or something".  10 moves later, he drops a pawn.  He gets up again.  "Maybe he needs to regain his composure or something".  5 moves after that, he dropped another pawn and left yet again.  This time, he came back with the TD!  I was getting freaked out, and asked if I had done something wrong.  The TD told me no, but he had to watch the game for some reason or another.  So I managed to win and my opponent left pretty fast.  I felt kinda bad for him.  But that only lasted about 10 seconds until my friend ran over and told me that every time that the guy had gotten up, he had gone to the TD and accused me of being a cheater!  Apparentely, a 1400 who could see a discovered check was secretely a GM in some other country.  How else could they notice such a thing?!  That was actually one of his arguments, that I was a GM from another country (India) and that I came to the US to win prize money be entering lower sections.  I've seen people be angry about losing, but not like this....

Surprising?

I give a (non-monetary) prize for biggest upset at my tourneys.  At one of my tournaments, I had a 500 point upset.  That guy came in seventh in the biggest upset category.  The winner had a 1200 point upset.  In the final round of a 5 round Swiss tournament, there was one game with a 1300 point rating difference.

I suppose the biggest surpise I ever had didn't happen during the tournament.  It happened the day after.  After running my first tournament, I got a call the next day.  It was the police.  They wanted to know if I had names and/or addresses for all of my players.  We held the tournament in a campus building, and we were the only ones using the building that day.  Some time after the tournament, a custodian had gone into the bathroom and found a death threat written on the wall.  Something vaguely threatening some sort of mass murder, like "Everyone Dies. April 30"

They asked if anyone had missed any rounds of the tournament or was in any way acting suspiciously.

What happend next and who did it???

yeah, you can't post something like that without finishing the story!

In a Christmas chess open where I was playing in my town, a strong syrian player was facing a woman. His position was winning.

But suddenly the woman said draw because the same position had occured three times.

The syrian player did'nt agree, so the  referee took his scoresheet, and used three chessboards on three different tables.

Then the referee began to read the scoresheet.

On the first table he placed the position when it had occured the first time.

On the second one he placed the position when it had occured the second time.

On the third one he place the position whent it had occured the third time.

The syrian player said then that the three positions did happen three times but not on the same chessboard!

That's funny!

Lolzz..

Oh...sorry.

Nothing happened next, that I know about.  I never heard anything more about it, and no crazed gunman committed a major massacre at Oakland University.

We also didn't know if it was one of the Chess players.  We were the only ones using the building, but the doors to the building were unlocked, and  a few dozen people would have traversed it some point during the day.  I don't know if there were surveillance cameras to see who went in and out of the bathrooms.

Ohhhh.. This kind of situations are really akward..