Slop counted on object balls. Often people are playing this way here anyway when playing 8-ball. The old Chinese-8 rules basically. I have to try hard to convince people to play call pocket with me. Safeties are not frowned upon, but encouraged. The standard of this event was the higher end of amateur. From what I understand, the guy saw the deliberate foul as a concession. I asked the TD today on WeChat, and he said he's going to make a more concrete list of rules. Deliberate fouls will not be part of play in this event. He cited that it was because he wanted to encourage as big a turn out as he could muster for the event, while keeping the playing time to one evening. Which I think is fair enough. He was generally quite apologetic. I accept that, was just a bit bewildered at the time. I shouldn't have let it get to me. But then I think being tired added to that, which also backs up his logic in removing deliberate fouls from play.
Of course, its bad enough here with all the different variations of "rules", let alone in a whole other part of the world. It just seems odd to me that they will play safeties, and ball-in-hand, but not let you intentionally foul. Then again, there are many so-called rules here that I fail to understand, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
As for saving time, that's a cop out. All your intentional foul is doing is playing a safety, with the BIH penalty already assumed. It's no more time than if you played a successful safety, actually its quicker, as your opponent shouldn't have to take as long to decide with BIH, vs being safetied well. Plus, it really won't come up that often...
Good on you, and everyone else, for handling it reasonably.