French Chess Federation investigates cheating players

[LozCooper]

Sean .. although probably written in jest..

Au contraire.

Here at the European Championships in Aix-les-Bains spectators are not allowed. Players, arbiters, organisers are issued with accreditation and if you're not wearing it, you're not allowed in.

Going further (and some of you will love this) there is a one way system. If a player leaves the playing venue (which includes toilets and a smoking area) they are not allowed back in to the playing venue.

That was also the case at the Olympiad & European Team. There was a seating area for spectators where they could watch games live on a screen but you had to have a name badge and a certain coloured card as a player to get in to the playing hall.

[Roger de Coverly]

Here at the European Championships in Aix-les-Bains spectators are not allowed. Players, arbiters, organisers are issued with accreditation and if you're not wearing it, you're not allowed in.

Olympiads have been known to do this, usually for space reasons.

Is it being done at Aix
(a) for reasons of space
(b) because they can or
(c) because they are perhaps understandably paranoid about spectators signalling to players?

The tail of lower rated French players suggests that at least in part it's a tourist event. My feeling is that if you had to adopt such measures at Hastings or a British Championship, you might as well scrap the whole event in its present form and put together a set of rules for what Kasparov termed "Advanced Chess".

[Alan Burke]

Looking at the situation from a publicity point of view, the refusal of spectators to actually watch an event 'live' does seem as though chess is then 'shooting itself in foot' with regard to trying to promote itself to the wider poublic.

Yes, I understand all the points regarding where people might stand or do a 'Major what's-he-called' signal as per "Who wants to be a millionaire ?" in order to give advice, but if you want people to really appreciate the complexities of the game, surely they should be allowed to attend and see the action for themselves - otherwise chess will continue to be looked upon by many as an 'elite' game which many think is only for the chosen few.

[Alex Holowczak]

'Major what's-he-called'

Ingram

[Alan Burke]

Well done Alex .. did you phone a friend (on your mobile !) or ask the audience (after they had stood in the correct postion so that you could work out the answer they were trying to give you !) ???

[Jonathan Bryant]

It would be a really sad day should it become routine practice that spectators are not allowed in playing halls (assuming space is available).

Yes, games can be watched online, but the experience at the London Chess Classic shows that even when a very good commentary room is available there'll still be a very large number of folk who want to sit and watch games being played.

[Roger de Coverly]

It would be a really sad day should it become routine practice that spectators are not allowed in playing halls (assuming space is available).

All the more so, given the FFE President's welcome
http://www.aixlesbains2011.fr/Default.aspx?id=1

from which

54 countries, more than 400 players, including the strongest Grandmasters of the world, will offer to chess funs a show never seen before in France! That is why the French Chess Federation sets a very ambitious goal: we would like everybody to keep unforgetable impressions of this event! We want it to be fautless in terms of welcoming and be a good exemple in terms of conviviality.

The Tournament Regulations at http://www.aixlesbains2011.fr/EuroActus ... hentic.pdf
say

Only players and arbiters shall be allowed in the playing area, except with the express permission of the Chief
Arbiter.
Players are not allowed to enter the closed area of the top boards, if they don’t play there themselves

.
You could allow spectators by the simple device of dividing the hall into playing area and spectator area. This has been done at Olympiads for example. Alternatively anyone paying an entry fee of ?? Euros is deemed to have express permission.

[Alex Holowczak]

Well done Alex .. did you phone a friend (on your mobile !) or ask the audience (after they had stood in the correct postion so that you could work out the answer they were trying to give you !) ???

No, I actually remembered his name.

I'm good at remembering obscure facts. Remembering how to prove things that might come up on my exams are considerably more challenging...

[Andy McCulloch]

GM Feller is taking part in the EU championships. For a man who must be under intense scrutiny, his performance so far is excellent. (+5 =2 -0)

[Andrew Bak]

GM Feller is taking part in the EU championships. For a man who must be under intense scrutiny, his performance so far is excellent. (+5 =2 -0)

It's easy to be on 6/7 when you are using computers

[E Michael White]

It would be naive to assume cheating of this type has not taken place before. If the communication used was the international correspondence code this is much longer and more complicated than it needs to be. For example a compressed code based on binary data is capable of transmitting 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 as :-

10101101111010001011010 thats 23 bits for 5 moves, whereas ICCN needs 24 bits for 2 moves.

Using a compressed binary code means that on 20% of moves the accomplice spectator need only visit 1 board ! On most moves it is necessary to visit only 4 to 6 boards without dwell on only one side. Its also not necessary to determine exactly which boards are used in advance and random board visits can be thrown in to confuse the arbiter.

All this makes the arbiters life very difficult. I rather fear arbiters and control teams will only be able to identify known scams. It would be safe I guess to take it that a generic scam would have basic elements of - a remote player analyses a move with Fritz/Rybka and then transmits it to the player. It shouldnt however be assumed that a mobile phone will be involved; a specially designed bluetooth watch would equally suffice worn by either the player or an accomplice.

Edit: Made this unnecessarily complicated to test out Geoff Chandlers creative 00100010001011

[Geoff Chandler]

Solution seems to be delay transmission of live games.
(so they are not live games) till after they have finished.

I know they are popular and I enjoyed following a game yesterday
but, as has been shown, it is open to severe abuse.

These jokers were only caught because apparently one of them
did not own a mobile phone and borrowed one forgetting to wipe the texts.

How many scams have slipped though without being detected?

[E Michael White]

Solution seems to be delay transmission of live games.
(so they are not live games) till after they have finished.

The remote player may get the last move other than over the Internet. Its likely that sets and boards used for live transmission may go wireless with obvious conclusions.

[Alex McFarlane]

Solution seems to be delay transmission of live games.
(so they are not live games) till after they have finished.

No need to wait that long. Both the Scottish and British Championships have been transmitted with a 10 minute delay. Not a significant amount of time to your normal spectator but enough to cause considerable time problems to anyone expecting to be told several moves in the French system.

Wi Fi boards would certainly be easier to hack into. This may be a further reason why the Monroi system hasn't proved too popular.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Alex.

I knew there was a time lag (not sure how long).

Did they have a time lag in the Olympiad?

At the tounrnament you are running (again congrats) why not make a stance
for the good of the game and ban all transmissions till after the games have finished.