Cheating in chess

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Just my view."

I agree. I quite accept what Alex says and it is understandable, but if the player does return and does something wrong, it will be a "first offence". If there had been some sort of investigation, the verdict on the previous case could affect that.

[Mick Norris]

"Just my view."

I agree. I quite accept what Alex says and it is understandable, but if the player does return and does something wrong, it will be a "first offence". If there had been some sort of investigation, the verdict on the previous case could affect that.

Agreed

[John Upham]

I have seen discussion in other places that the Igor Rausis photograph was staged.

Reason(s)given was that he agreed to this to avoid revealing the exact method of cheating.

A mobile telephone hidden in a sock and used in the toilet is not ground breaking technology.

[JustinHorton]

Claims of staged photographs are very much the theme du jour

[John Upham]

Can anyone confirm if software exists that allows a camera to recognise a position and punt that position into an engine for analysis ?

[Roger de Coverly]

Can anyone conform if software exists that allows a camera to recognise a position and punt that position into an engine for analysis ?

There was a system called "Chess Vision" which supposedly could do the DGT thing of transmitting games. Presuming that it could capture in pgn format, any engine could then be used for analysis.

Nothing much has been heard of it recently.

http://www.illist.co/company_page/chess-vision

[Paul McKeown]

Can anyone conform if software exists that allows a camera to recognise a position and punt that position into an engine for analysis ?

I would have thought this might be a difficult product to implement. It would require some AI style recognition of a digital image file to determine what the pieces are, what colour they are and what colour the squares are, and then tokenising that. Once tokenised, of course, it becomes a rather trivial exercise.

For chess board images built up from character codes for the pieces and squares, of course, the tokenisation is already in place; it might need some linearisation or other sorting, but again fairly trivial. However, that is not the normal way to produce chess board images.

Thinking about it further, though, the various servers or publishers have a limited library of pieces and squares which they use to produce these images. Recognising pieces which are predetermined in form should not be so difficult. You would need to take scaling and suchlike into account, but not a huge amount of work, particularly if you focus on one type of set ("Staunton") on one server ("chess.com") and switch off any image enhancements (e.g. 3D, shading, etc.)

[Alex Holowczak]

"Just my view."

I agree. I quite accept what Alex says and it is understandable, but if the player does return and does something wrong, it will be a "first offence". If there had been some sort of investigation, the verdict on the previous case could affect that.

Agreed

For what it is worth, given the player verbally admitted he was cheating, I expect it would be non-trivial arguing that a subsequent cheating conviction would be a "first offence".

[Brian Towers]

"Just my view."

I agree. I quite accept what Alex says and it is understandable, but if the player does return and does something wrong, it will be a "first offence". If there had been some sort of investigation, the verdict on the previous case could affect that.

Agreed

For what it is worth, given the player verbally admitted he was cheating, I expect it would be non-trivial arguing that a subsequent cheating conviction would be a "first offence".

I'm sure Jon Ashworth could help out with suitably convincing arguments.

[David Sedgwick]

I'm sure Jon Ashworth could help out with suitably convincing arguments.

As not everyone will click on the link. please could I make it clear that the reference is to John Ashworth the Labour politician. NOT to his namesake John Ashworth, Chief Executive Officer of Caplin Systems, the new sponsors of the Hastings Congress.

[Brian Towers]

I'm sure Jon Ashworth could help out with suitably convincing arguments.

As not everyone will click on the link. please could I make it clear that the reference is to John Ashworth the Labour politician. NOT to his namesake John Ashworth, Chief Executive Officer of Caplin Systems, the new sponsors of the Hastings Congress.

Erm, no it isn't. The Labour politician spells his name "Jon", short for "Jonathan". I'm not aware of any Labour politician called "John Ashworth".

[David Sedgwick]

I'm sure Jon Ashworth could help out with suitably convincing arguments.

As not everyone will click on the link. please could I make it clear that the reference is to John Ashworth the Labour politician. NOT to his namesake John Ashworth, Chief Executive Officer of Caplin Systems, the new sponsors of the Hastings Congress.

Erm, no it isn't. The Labour politician spells his name "Jon", short for "Jonathan". I'm not aware of any Labour politician called "John Ashworth".

Thank you Brian.

I'll let my post stand, for the benefit of anyone else who makes the same mistake as I did.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"For what it is worth, given the player verbally admitted he was cheating, I expect it would be non-trivial arguing that a subsequent cheating conviction would be a "first offence"."

That would help - assuming you have contemporaneous statements from witnesses to that. And he might turn up with Elon Musk's lawyer (and jury).

[Brian Towers]

"For what it is worth, given the player verbally admitted he was cheating, I expect it would be non-trivial arguing that a subsequent cheating conviction would be a "first offence"."

That would help - assuming you have contemporaneous statements from witnesses to that. And he might turn up with Elon Musk's lawyer (and jury).

I'm not sure what help witnesses to his verbal admission would be. After all, if you can write in a book that 20 years ago you punched a drunk in Amsterdam and then dumped his body in a canal and then when the Dutch police match a body to the time and place claim that what you wrote was a publicity stunt and walk away a free man then clearly neither Elon Musk's lawyer nor his jury are required.

The underlying point remains: an historic verbal admission of cheating is worth very little in the absence of further conclusive action.

[JustinHorton]

"For what it is worth, given the player verbally admitted he was cheating, I expect it would be non-trivial arguing that a subsequent cheating conviction would be a "first offence"."

That would help - assuming you have contemporaneous statements from witnesses to that. And he might turn up with Elon Musk's lawyer (and jury).

After all, if you can write in a book that 20 years ago you punched a drunk in Amsterdam and then dumped his body in a canal

For the record, I believe this account may appear in the newspaper serialisation of the book and not in the book itself.