English Chess Forum

NickFaulks wrote:I knew nothing about this case until I stumbled upon it here. I hope it will be reported to FIDE.

Who does one report FIDE to?
The first judgement returned by the sub committee seems predictable enough, no surprises there. The second judgement should be more interesting, if it ever appears.

IanDavis wrote: The first judgement returned by the sub committee seems predictable enough, no surprises there.

There is something of a paradox. You can only effectively ban someone from playing chess who has been caught cheating if everyone who might invite him or her to play or accept their entry knows who it is. But some interpretations of British and Irish law suggest that you cannot name Juniors (under 18s) even if they have been caught cheating red-handed. The technique for reporting banned subjects was well established in the former Soviet Union. You publish two apparently unrelated pieces of information in juxtaposition.

The case is made that a potential employer might Google <name> and chess and the top results are a cheating scandal from some years earlier. That at least might have deterrent value.

There was another recent case in Bulgaria. Bulgarian law must be more robust as the chief arbiter of the tournament had no difficulty in expelling the junior caught cheating and in naming him in a formal and public letter to his home Federation.

"The event wasn't FIDE rated, so I'm guessing it won't be reported to them. I've personally caught two cheaters in FIDE rated events and reported both to FIDE.

I'm not aware of FIDE taking any action in either case."

How about the players' national federation(s), or the federation where the events took place?

Kevin Thurlow wrote:"The event wasn't FIDE rated, so I'm guessing it won't be reported to them. I've personally caught two cheaters in FIDE rated events and reported both to FIDE.

I'm not aware of FIDE taking any action in either case."

How about the players' national federation(s), or the federation where the events took place?

Same answer

Kevin Thurlow wrote: How about the players' national federation(s), or the federation where the events took place?

The ECF did feel moved to attempt to introduce a code of conduct. The way this was worded just encouraged it to be used by anyone who had a dispute with an ECF Director and so it ran for around six months before being suspended. Actually if you don't require a Licence to play chess, how can a ban by a National Federation have any practical effect? Only if you named and shamed and as a consequence, organisers and match captains declined to permit the player to enter tournaments or to play in matches.

It's believed that in the cases known to the ECF, they did at least get apologies from the parents. That's something the ICU could have insisted on. Perhaps also from the school as the offender was part of an official school group.

I caught an arbiter cheating once. This was at a junior event and he kept walking past his son's board pretending to cough but he was obviously shouting "clock" to his son. His son, at the time, was about 12 years old and obviously had a problem remembering to press his clock because he had 'clock' written all over both his hands. I only mention this because I wonder if that would be classed as referring to notes and cheating?

BTW. In fairness to the junior organisation concerned (which is a very good organisation), this was a parent acting as a volunteer arbiter, and really nothing to do with the junior chess organisation.

Cheating at chess was never a serious problem, until the arrival of smart phone technology.
I do have sympathy for the Irish Chess Union, there is no easy answer to the "Chess Row in Cork".
Every competitive player in Ireland would know the identity of the junior involved, since he was expelled from the tournament, before the last round. It did not require Colm Daly's Blog to identify him.
The junior has admitted his guilt, and I believe that he should be identified, if only to dissuade other juniors from cheating. However, we must abide by the Irish Rule of Law, which protects juniors under 18 years of age.
We do need guidance from F.I.D.E., on this world wide problem.

Unless something is done this problem will grow until it kills peoples interest in playing chess. Sorry to say it but because its very hard to do anything pro active all we could do is ban for ever anyone caught cheating, that would act as a deterrent. It would be easy to have within the ECF a list of those so banned and one that organisers could refer to.

The world athletics organisation has learnt to its cost that dropping the drug using ban from 4 years to 2 years has made matters worse and its likely to go back to 4 years or more. If theres no effective deterrent there are people who will do it, thats life in the real world not the Enid Blighton make believe world that many people live in.

Ernie Lazenby wrote: It would be easy to have within the ECF a list of those so banned and one that organisers could refer to.

It would indeed be easy, but such are the distortions to common sense created by the various measures to protect vulnerable groups, that it might not be legal.

Ernie Lazenby wrote:If theres no effective deterrent there are people who will do it,

Naming and shaming is an obvious deterrent, but may not always be legal.

It's established that arbiters have the power to declare a game lost and expel players from tournaments if they are detected consulting a chess engine whilst playing. This may also extend to retrospectively changing the results of earlier rounds and rating the games as lost. This naturally identifies the player provided the event is known and the cross-table published, but not in a way that jumps out with a casual Google search.

FIDE are working on anti-cheating measures. The committee is concentrating on electronic forms at the moment. We are currently in Tromso meeting with FIDE VPs about the Laws of Chess. Some of those concerns are causing changes which will take effect from 1 July 2014.

Thats good news. One can only hope something workable comes out of the meeting.

Roger de Coverly wrote:Actually if you don't require a Licence to play chess, how can a ban by a National Federation have any practical effect?

The ECF is responsible for grading games.

If you are caught cheating, your games don't get graded.

Simples.

Clive Blackburn wrote:

Roger de Coverly wrote:Actually if you don't require a Licence to play chess, how can a ban by a National Federation have any practical effect?

The ECF is responsible for grading games.

If you are caught cheating, your games don't get graded.

Simples.

I would hope that there would be a stronger punishment than that

Clive Blackburn wrote: If you are caught cheating, your games don't get graded.

The measures that have been taken by arbiters discovering cheating during their tournaments have been the maximum available to them, namely to expel the player from the tournament and deem all their previous games lost. That can also count the result for grading as a loss.

What we are talking about is whether they would be allowed to take part in another match or tournament. It's possible their opponent would refuse to play them if the game was not to be graded, but more likely that a refusal was because they objected to being paired against a computer or someone using a computer.

Roger de Coverly wrote: It's possible their opponent would refuse to play them if the game was not to be graded.

On the other hand, if the cheating player was likely to be defaulted regardless of the actual result of the game, their opponents would probably be more than happy to play them!