Cheating in chess

[NickFaulks]

The Fair Play Commission are having a seminar here once the tournament finishes on January 6.

The cost is 200 euro and you get an FPE norm at the end. That is presumably intended to become a valuable thing to have,

[Ian Thompson]

Preparing for an opponent by studying their opening repertoire is also cheating. (yes it is).

Better strip John Nunn of his World Over 65 Champion title then after this admission in December's ChessMoves (pages 4 -5) - "My opponent may have felt that I was unlikely to have prepared for 6...g6, as in the main databases he has no games with this position. However, having unearthed his online handle, I then had access to many online games which showed that he had reached this position twice".

[Richard Bates]

Preparing for an opponent by studying their opening repertoire is also cheating. (yes it is).

Quite right. Downright dastardly behaviour.

[Joey Stewart]

If not for being sneaky on the opening preparation thenstrip him for being a sandbagger, clearly playing in a section he is too strong for by making himself old enough to qualify.

[Chris Rice]

Playing in Stockholm at the moment and the players had a few feathers ruffled even before Round 1 began which started 45 minutes late. This was entirely due to the Fair Play Commission who are here en masse after the Stockholm organisers reached out to them for help with cheating. There was total confusion outside the playing hall with people not being allowed in till they gave up their jackets to the cloakroom staff and everyone was scanned. There were no announcements about this or signs or directions whatever.

OK so cloakroom ticket obtained and then going through the scan I went into the playing hall where the opening speeches were taking place. Bojana Bojatovic of the Fair Play Commission apologised for the inconvenience and said that the fact that the Swedish organisers had reached out to them had led to the upgrading of the Rilton Cup tournament into a Candidates qualifier. However, today she said they were being lenient as it was Round 1 and tomorrow they were going to be stricter! Under consideration is whether they provide us with pens rather than allowing us to bring our own in and the after my game the Chief Arbiter told me all watches would be banned, smart or otherwise. That leaves me to decide whether to walk the 10 minutes from my hotel to the venue tomorrow in the freezing cold without a jacket in order to avoid the cloakroom queues.

The Fair Play Commission are having a seminar here once the tournament finishes on January 6.

The tournament is now over but here is an update on what happened with the Fair Play measures. The majority of rounds started late with queues for getting scanned. Before the rounds started there was usually someone from the FPC making speeches in different languages but the message was always the same "we know you don't like this but we are doing it for you". The point about the Swedish organisers inviting the FPC in to instigate Fair Play measures for the first time in a tournament was made repeatedly.

In Round 2 all the players got their very own lanyard with the player's name on it and their section. They were placed by the board so when we had done getting scanned we would put this on for the duration of the game. When the game was finished we had to take it off place it by the board when our status would change to that of a spectator.

In Round 7 the FPC said they were introducing a new measure where spectators could go no further than the entrance to the doorway. i.e. they could not walk around the boards. I did wonder why you would want to be a spectator in this event as you couldn't see the boards clearly from the doorway and you would also be blocking access to people going in and out. In Round 8 the FPC announced that spectators could now wander around the room i.e. the round 7 measures had been quietly abandoned.

The last round, round 9, saw an FPC member making a speech before the round started stating that this was the first tournament where Fair Play measures had been introduced and basically it had been a roaring success. He went on to say that "the playing conditions had been improved for the players as we now could play with the tranquillity of knowing that when we were desperately trying to save a game at least we would know it was because we were getting beaten by a better player not that we were playing a cheat". I tried to process that and failed miserably.

In summary I could see what the FPC were trying to do but I think if anyone was determined to cheat they could easily have done so. A lot of players were staying in the hotel that the venue was at and there wasn't any rescanning after the start of the round so players could have gone back to their rooms and either used a laptop there or a mobile or take the mobile with them back to the toilets during the game. A lot of the players thought the measures they introduced were overkill, especially no watches and jackets and it was little surprise that the use of our own pens was not challenged by the FPC. On the plus side we didn't seem to have any incidences of cheating so maybe just having the FPC there (like the police) might have been enough to put off any would be cheater.

[Roger de Coverly]

A lot of players were staying in the hotel that the venue was at and there wasn't any rescanning after the start of the round so players could have gone back to their rooms and either used a laptop there or a mobile or take the mobile with them back to the toilets during the game.

I would have thought it obvious, if not to the FPC, that if you have a residential tournament and are paranoid, that access to hotel rooms during play has to be monitored. It's forbidden anyway by the designation of playing area excluding them. The same could apply to non-residential tournaments where cars are parked outside,

[Chris Rice]

Another cheater gets expelled from a Romanian tournament after his Smartphone gets found in the toilet with the position of his game on it after 15 moves. There wan an anti-cheating officer at the tournament which clearly helped in catching him though the player denied it was his phone though for me that wasn't the most pathetic part. Up to that point he had only had 0.5/4, he had a 1698 rating and was caught cheating against a player rated 1200.

[Roger de Coverly]

Another cheater gets expelled from a Romanian tournament after his Smartphone gets found in the toilet with the position of his game on it after 15 move

Not just any tournament, but the Romanian championship, run as a Swiss for all participants. That could account for a possibly higher level of scrutiny. But it was the established and relatively easy to detect method of cheating using the phone in the toilet. With a solitary draw from four games, it would seem unlikely that engine matching identified anything amiss, but perhaps that indicated something as well, a variable playing standard depending on whether he was able to consult his electronic assistant.

[Tim Spanton]

He seems to be 1698 at chess, but 1100 at best at cheating

[Mick Norris]

Dennis Monokroussos has provided a link to an article by FM Nate Solon

[Kevin Thurlow]

It seems totally unreasonable to message someone during a game and start demanding they make a "zoom call". Do many people actually look at messages during a game?

[Roger de Coverly]

Do many people actually look at messages during a game?

I would have thought as a matter of principle, that receipt of messages should firmly be "off". These games are being broadcast live to the world, so easy enough for a spectator to supply hints.

[Ian Thompson]

It seems totally unreasonable to message someone during a game and start demanding they make a "zoom call". Do many people actually look at messages during a game?

The request to join a Zoom call should have been between games as that's what the rules say. I assume the subsequent requests during games were via the Zoom call, not messaging. That doesn't make it any less unacceptable though.

[Geoff Chandler]

That is a good article Nick pointed us too. I was amused at the player being asked to show a 360 view of his room via a Zoom Call. Almost me made to want to grab my laptop and play in one of these events in 'odd locations' just so I can give a 360 view of where I am.

'Odd Locations' = on a bus, a waiting room in a train station, sitting in paddle boat on a boating lake. My grandson's bedroom which looks the IT section of Jodrell Bank (that would freak them out) four computers and a telescope that looks a bazooka. But if I ever get around to it I'll do it from my sitting room only just for them I'll put up a huge picture of Hans Niemann above my fireplace.

The troubling bit about Nate Solon's article (see Nick's link) is how mildly relieved he felt by not beating Kramnik. It is a sad modern trend that any win against the grade can be viewed with suspicion and actually make the winner feel uncomfortable.

[Wadih Khoury]

The troubling bit about Nate Solon's article (see Nick's link) is how mildly relieved he felt by not beating Kramnik. It is a sad modern trend that any win against the grade can be viewed with suspicion and actually make the winner feel uncomfortable.

It is sad indeed. I remember stressing a lot when my son had "perfect" games according to lichess and I found myself constantly wishing he made a couple of mistakes in each game . All because everyone gets incredibly suspicious whenever someone has a "perfect" game.