After action report

 In any important chess tournament, there are always a few incidents to report. In the case of the recent ACT Chess Championship, a few spring to mind.

There was one game involving a 50 move claim, and one game that almost had one. In the case of the game that reached 50 moves without a pawn move or capture, the first claim was in fact for a repetition. However instead of writing the move on the scoresheet, he picked up the piece to demonstrate the move he intended to play. Unfortunately this simply meant he had to move the piece, and could not then make a claim, as it was his opponents move. His opponent then avoided the repetition, but there were enough checks to reach (and indeed go past) the 50 move mark, at which point a correct claim was made.

The other game saw 48 moves of RvB before the stronger side offered a draw. 

The other main issue was players missing their games. Fortunately there were only 2 games forfeited, and I assume both were simply not knowing the tournament schedule. In one case a player played the 1st round (7pm Friday), failed to appear for the 2nd (the following morning), but did turn up at 7pm (Saturday) thinking the 2nd round started at that time (NB no one else was confused). They then said they would turn up for the 2:30 round the next day (as they weren't paired in the morning round), but once again failed to appear (and weren't included in the pairings). Then they turned up an hour into the 6th round (Monday) asking if they had a game, at which point I suggested that entering the tournament may have not been a good idea.

No mobile phone forfeits, although one player did take their bag out of the playing hall, during their game, and as it did contain a phone, lost the game. After explaining the situation to the player concerned he both accepted the ruling, and understood the reasoning behind it.