The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

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AlanLlewellyn
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Wed Jun 29, 2022 6:07 pm

https://web.archive.org/web/20160707065 ... ation.html

although i do sound a lot like fischer, in this transcript, you got to understand people with psychosis do sound the same, and i ended up in hospital not long after that happened and not for a broken foot. The games really set off a paranoia in me that nigel and other gms were trying to make me come forward to say i had beaten a load of grandmasters and they would turn round and call me mad and have me committed. Well i have recovered now with treatment and hopefully i am a saner person now.

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Joey Stewart
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by Joey Stewart » Wed Jun 29, 2022 9:58 pm

It would have been quite entertaining to see some of your opponent replies in those exchanges as it kind of ends up looking like you are having a long one sided argument with yourself in that transcript?
Lose one queen and it is a disaster, Lose 1000 queens and it is just a statistic.

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AlanLlewellyn
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Wed Jun 29, 2022 10:28 pm

i was totally out of order, i was sent over the edge when i was under pressure, i hope whoever was guest1923 is understanding of the situation.
going over it i remember it vaguely and now i find it funny Laugh out Loud how similar to Bobby I sound and it sugests maybe bobby could have been helped with professional help, like I was.

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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:23 pm

An article I have sent to malcolm pein - i have stated not to publish it without nigels acknowledgement

Hello let me set the scene, In 2001 on the Internet Chess Club, Nigel short played me and thought he was playing Bobby Fischer. In his column in the Telegraph newspaper he declared he had indeed just played Bobby in his third coming after the World famous player, who won the chess match of the century against Boris Spassky, in 1972, came out of self imposed hiding(allegedly).

Now I was oblivious to this fact that it was actually me and not Bobby who Nigel had played I will set the scene now and it all makes (a weird) kind of sense.
I was an up and coming player in 1996, I had just come second to one John Toothill a 190 grade player from Cumbria in the Cumbria County Individuals and in 1995 I had come third in an under 175 grade tournament in Preston. My grade in 1996 was only 153 but it was going up fast. Then I moved to Manchester to do a Masters degree and my world fell apart. I ended up in hospital, and not for a broken foot.
So when I partly recovered and was finally let out of solitary confinement, I decided to join Kasparovs now defunct website online to get a bit of chess practice. On that I quite remarkable achieved a rating of 2350 quickly beating many grandmasters on the way.
I continued, with a lack of concentration, to struggle in my otb play and made a ton load of mistakes, also for some strange reason people seemed much stronger now.
Anyway it was online that I was proving myself a strong player and after the Kasparov website went defunct in the year 2000 I went to a site my fiancée had found it was called the internet chess club. I soon achieved incredible feats on there beating many grandmasters to a pulp.
Anyway I went in my fiancees front room where the computer usually was to play chess online one day and my fiancée had moved the computer into the small kitchen we had and said ‘I’ve arranged for a match for you it was a surprise’. I think in hindsight she had a camera in the kitchen for the event.
Apparently the match was with Nigel Short, who had a few years before in 1993 challenged the great Garry Kasparov for the world championship, as was at the time, Britains strongest ever player, almost at his peak.
When, early on in the match, I went to play the English opening, I mouse slipped and played 1 f3. Now I was unsure what to do and annoyed with myself and thought I was going to get destroyed on the board so I just marched my king all over the board, making popular the bongcloud opening as totally unknown to me, the games were going to be analyzed infinitum. People would analyze the opening played for hidden strategies in great depth but really I was just making it up after a mouse slip. After I won the game vs Nigel I started to get suspicious, how could a patzer like me beat the great Nigel Short, with 1 f3 and 2 Kf2? Unless he was letting me win.
Paranoia took hold, my illness from 1996 re occurred and I set about testing the king march openings to destruction. Rather incredibly I kept winning and won the Match something like 11-1. I was getting so paranoid asking why was he letting me win at this stage and finally I played the opening 1 f4 d5 2 f5 e5 3 g4?? Qh4#. I did so deliberately to prove he wasn’t letting me win.
After a few games the person who was using a handle(a handle is an assumed phrase on online sites) called Ural, who my fiancée said was Nigel’s incognito handle, he mentioned a name of what I then thought was his actual name(Armando Acevedo I think it was), later I was to discover it was actually the name of a Mexican opponent to Bobby at the Siegen Olympiad in 1970 but when I mentioned it was a Mexican name, my fiancée said ‘quick give me the keyboard I know that name’ and she wrote Siegen 1970. Unknown to me she had memorized Fischers opponnents it seemed. But I just thought the Mexican name was my opponent I was playing. Anyway my fiancée said he ‘thinks your bobby’, and when Nigel continued with the statement ‘Who is the greatest player you have played in blitz?’ I didn’t think it was Nigel but the words of my fiancée came to mind, that the person thought I was bobby and I had just read ‘the life and games of Tal’ in which it stated Bobby was most afraid of Tal in blitz, so I quipped back ‘if I am who you think I am I would say Tal’
Anyway my fiancée a few days later told me about Nigel Short had gone public but I was away with the fairies and convinced that I couldn’t beat Nigel Short 11-1 so it must have been that Mexican guy (Acevedo) not Nigel I played. I forgot about the whole incident.

I ended up in hospital in 2003 and didn’t come out until 2007. I found otb very difficult to concentrate on and did poorly, my rating going down to 93 at one stage that is about 1380 elo. Anyway I completely forgot about everything that had happened until in 2020 I was searching online for a Bobby Fischer video of any sort, and I came across a video of an event between Bobby Fischer and Nigel Short. Intrigued, I watched it and nearly fell off my chair when they said the handles used by bobby were guest71 and guest2563 both of which I remembered setting up.
At the time I set up the handles I was told I was going to be given ordinary guest accounts but I refused and stated I wanted meaningful handles so a compromise was suggested that I make them look like guest accounts which had guest and a number but the number I choose meant something to me, guest71 and guest2563 had a meaning to me which I knew and remembered setting them up and when in the video the same handles were mentioned I thought hey up THAT’S ME.
Every piece of incidental detail tallied but they stated in the video they thought the person used a computer engine. Indeed it had become an urban myth about Bobby playing Nigel completely unbeknown to me and the conclusion was it was a hoax. Many videos and articles had emerged on various theories, that I had used multiple engines, that I was the real Bobby Fischer, all were dismissed or promoted and I set about trying to put the record straight.
I didn’t use an engine the engines available were very wooden and unstrategical, at the time. Plus the three minute time frame was recognized as putting impossible limits on computer assistance at the time before such things as computer cheat plug ins were invented. Deep blue was available but at a cost of operation of 1 million pounds a second the cray computer used in it would have been very costly. No in 2001 I was in the groove online and playing sublime stuff.

Matt Bridgeman
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by Matt Bridgeman » Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:22 pm

It was before my time a bit, but it looks like Pocket Fritz 1 was out in 2001. No idea if that was strong enough to beat GM's at online blitz.

Did draw a (rapid) game with Leko in 2001 though; https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1170272

It seems by January 2003 there was an over the board player caught using Pocket Fritz at a tournament in Lampertsheim. It strikes me online cheating might have been starting to emerge as the new trend during this period. I think the general view is Nigel bumped into one of these early online cheats ...but maybe not! It's certainly a great story.
Last edited by Matt Bridgeman on Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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AlanLlewellyn
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:29 pm

i had fritz 5 at the time- it played horribly mechanically, i can look 8 moves ahead quite often in my play currently usually accurately. for example fritz 5 looked 5 moves ahead with no strategy to speak of at the time thats 10 plies, you really had to be there to realise how rediculous a 2450 computer playing like that would have been. sure it may have beaten nigel 11-1 but certainly not playing human moves, it would have done it mechanically.

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AlanLlewellyn
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:40 pm

plus the fact matt it was 3 0 how on earth can you transfer moves to a pocket fritz in 3 minutes

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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by Matt Bridgeman » Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:47 pm

AlanLlewellyn wrote:
Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:40 pm
plus the fact matt it was 3 0 how on earth can you transfer moves to a pocket fritz in 3 minutes
I suppose two people sat next to each other with a laptop and a computer could do it in time? I have no clue, but I'm hoping it's you Alan as it's a way more interesting story than just yet another online cheater in the tens of thousands of other online cheaters.

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AlanLlewellyn
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:48 pm

i am not a kgb technical agent, I was known as Toryboy in the 80s.

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AlanLlewellyn
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:07 pm

Matt Bridgeman wrote:
Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:47 pm

I suppose two people sat next to each other with a laptop and a computer could do it in time? I have no clue, but I'm hoping it's you Alan as it's a way more interesting story than just yet another online cheater in the tens of thousands of other online cheaters.
I think i was on camera and pocket fritz 1 was similar to fritz 5 i think it that it could beat nigel 11 -1 in a match but not playing those moves.

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AlanLlewellyn
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:11 pm

plus take a look at my games on kasparov website circa 1997 they were as good and the internet was in its infancy then

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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:15 pm

plus if i cheated then why not cheat now and get a good rating online or even otb. I dont because i never cheated then and everyone cheats vs me now.

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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by Matt Bridgeman » Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:23 pm

AlanLlewellyn wrote:
Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:15 pm
plus if i cheated then why not cheat now and get a good rating online or even otb. I dont because i never cheated then and everyone cheats vs me now.
I wasn't meaning you. Only that if you are mistaken then in all likelihood it was just some proto-online cheat.

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AlanLlewellyn
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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by AlanLlewellyn » Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:37 pm

the problem with online chess is anything could be happening -i mean you could be playing an alien with 8 tentacles or the noraid super computer and camera footage can be faked. But when you play me atleast at my end you get human input alone.

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Re: The 2001 Fischer internet hoax

Post by Richard Bates » Thu Jun 30, 2022 7:12 pm

Computers on ICC in 2001 were easily good enough to murder human players at blitz speeds. The best humans could only really compete at slower time controls.

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