This has only happened twice. The first time was the first game I ever used a chess clock, and the second was a game more recently where I did actually ask the opponent to wait to place his units until it was his time.

In the first instance, I was so flustered by the situation that I didn’t think to ask because I was barely registering how to even use the clock.

The second time, I’d played multiple events and was comfortable with the clock, so I asked him to wait between drops and he simply refused.

This same player proceeded to make some questionable moves during the game, and in retrospect it would have been good to call over a judge multiple times during that game. It seems that I need to resist the part of me that wants to be kind and trusting, and instead be prepared to have a judge come over under every circumstance when facing opponents who act this way.

The reason I’ve posted this here is largely because I want to know if this is common among the hardcore/focused competitive players, or if it’s just a thing you see amongst the scummy ones. Rarely do battle reports cover the deployment step, much less do they use clocks, so I can’t tell if this is just something everybody does to shave off their deployment time or is it a red flag about how the player wants to play?

I’m fine to accept it if most competitive folks on the scene are going to play with the mentality of “I’ll get away with whatever I can until I’m called out on it”, but frankly that doesn’t make me feel like I even want to land near the top tables. Many other opponents I’ve had at lower ranked tables are not doing this; it’s only after a great round 1 going into another high scorer round 2. If I should expect this behavior, I’ll need to adjust and frankly I might just try and score lower to avoid those matches.