I'm presently in a tournament that when playing black you are required to move your knight on the first move. If you don't you are required to resign.  I have an opponent that didn't make the proper move and refuses to resign.  I contacted the organizer of the tournament who said he would resolve it.  A week later I'm still playing the opponent so I must assume he still refuses to resign and the organizer has no way of forcing him to resign.  I suggest that an organizer of an tournament should not have move requirements that they cannot enforce. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

likitysplit

He said he would contact my opponent to remind him of the rules.  I have sent two follow-up messages asking for the status and I haven't received a reply. My opponent is over 500 points above my rating so I would lose anyway.  Two other players in our bracket resigned to this opponent when they made the incorrect move so why shouldn't he.

I haven't had that happen, thankfully. But that is cr@p. I'm surprised the board didn't automatically boot him.

The Tournament Director should entirely remove the offending player from the tournament.... can't play by the rules? then you can't play here!

It's the only solution that makes sense, providing that the TD has been in contact with the offender, and he refuses to comply. I'm rather surprised this hasn't occurred already.... are they friends?

yes,the director could remove the players from his tournament.

but he could not remove that player still has uncompleted game, the director have to wait the game completion.

so you have to wait, too

How did this thread get resurected after 8 months?

Unfortunately there were a number of "Jokers" who managed to get into The Dark Knight Tournament, and refused to resign after opening with a black pawn instead of their Dark Knight.  Most of the people who made the mistake were very good sports about it, but there were a few that I had to contact several times due to their stubborness.  After contacting the staff about it, I was informed that a tournament director cannot forfeit a single game, only remove the person from the tournament completely (which would cause them to forefeit ALL of their games, which wouldn't be fair either since the other games were legit).  I was told that in the future, any such tournament should be "Invitation Only" since it can only be done on the honor system.

The person orginally referred to in this thread has since resigned from the tournament, and any future Dark Knight Tournaments will certainly be "Invitation Only."

This regulation is news to me. I thought the rules of chess were fixed. I am a new member and would find playing in such a tournament interesting. All participants should understand the first-move-knight rule. I believe some players were not clear on that rule.

This was a unique tournament with a unique rule that everyone agreed to when they joined the tournament, but many forgot (especially in later rounds when a new game just showed up on their list of games in progress).  There was no way to make it a thematic tournament since there were so many different openings that would be acceptable. 

In a standard chess game, white has 20 possible first moves and black also has 20 possible responses yielding 400 different combinations for move #1.  In this case, white still has 20 choices (The Joker has no rules ), but black had only 4 possible responses (Na6, Nc6, Nf6, Nh6 - The Dark Knight Opens) yielding 80 different possible openings.  It made for a very unique challenge, which is why so many people were drawn to it, even if they weren't Batman fans.

Bulletins were sent to all the players before the tournament began (multiple times), and right after each round started, so everyone was aware of the rule, but like I said, some just forgot, or simply didn't realize the game they were looking at was part of this tournament (accidents happen).

Overall, the tournament has run pretty smoothly, I just can't believe that it's still going on (it started over a year ago when the movie THE DARK KNIGHT was released).  At this rate, the NEXT Batman movie will be out before this tournament is done.    (You can bet I'll be starting another one at that time).

If you'd like to play in the next one, make sure you're on my friends list so you'll know when I start it up.  Or you can just join my group, The Dark Knights.  I started a blog for the tournament, but haven't been able to keep up with it, so it's not very current, but still makes for some interesting reading:

http://blog.chess.com/Billium248/the-dark-knight-tournament-blog

http://blog.chess.com/Billium248/the-dark-knight-opens-one-year-later

They need to work on their knight moves.