Chess Player Strip Searched

[Roger de Coverly]

Yes, but... in the Chessbase article, Regan is quoted as saying:

"A bit of information in FM Valeri Lilov's new video that I regard as most surprising and important is that Ivanov took about ten seconds for most of his moves, regardless of position. GM Kiril Georgiev had stated this for his game against Ivanov in the rapid chess tournament in Kustendil (Bulgaria), where this would be less surprising. If that is true, then it meets the standards of observational evidence of cheating that I had in mind when composing my "Parable of the Golfers" policy page."

So maybe that observational evidence is there, but has not been properly assembled yet.

I thought the ten seconds a move only applied in the rapid tournament.

If anything a rapid speed of play is indicative of not cheating, as you might not have the time to input the move and get the suggested reply back.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Paul

Matching up his play with a computer is good but can one send a move,
run it through a box, and get it back in 10 seconds.

Everyone has him pegged as a cheat but nobody has a clue how it's being done.
He might just be on the level.

I can imagine them having the same discussion in 1783 when Philidor played 3 games of chess blindfold.
"Impossible, he must be cheating!"

We as a race might be evolving into thinking like a computer.
You have to be careful with evolution, it strikes when you are least expecting it.
(although in this case when you give GM titles away with every packet of cornflakes what did you expect?)

You cannot say we are not evolving.
Look what happened when they said we shall never leave the African Jungle.
We left and populated the planet.

Scot Michael Grove (2021) beat a GM a few days ago in Icleand.
(Iceland the country not the shop.)

http://www.chess-results.com/tnr102708. ... =30&wi=821

If he beats another one I vote we all go up there, strip him naked and feed him to the polar bears.

I'm serious. These GM beaters will breed us out. Catch them and steralise them!

Everyone back to the jungle.

[Roger de Coverly]

Stopping blatant (1st move with one engine) cheats isn't going to be enough for very long.

Ivanov may have found a method, but how do you consult a chess engine nearly every move in the context of a typical rapid play game, OTB league game or tournament? Isn't it enough to ensure that players are under observation nearly all the game? It's not going to catch premeditated cheating using specialist hardware and perhaps assistants, which is why it's important to understand Ivanov's method if there is one.

[Ian Thompson]

If he is cheating, then he has to have a method of communicating the board position or the latest move played to either an engine on his person or in the hands of third party accomplice(s). He also has to receive back the move recommended. Using the evidence of the rapid play tournament, all this has to be done at ten seconds a move.

Not only that, but the communication has to be very accurate. If an accomplice was involved you'd expect to get some move transmission errors, where either the accomplice enters the wrong move in the engine, or the player plays the wrong move on the board. Even without an accomplice, you'd still expect the player to make a few mistakes where he doesn't play the move he was told to. That would be likely to lead to occasional crass blunders, wouldn't it? They haven't happened, have they?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I wonder, if there is a method, and someone works it out, are they going to say anything...

[Sean Hewitt]

Even without an accomplice, you'd still expect the player to make a few mistakes where he doesn't play the move he was told to. That would be likely to lead to occasional crass blunders, wouldn't it? They haven't happened, have they?

Wasn't there an endgame where he made an elementary blunder and lost?

[Matt Fletcher]

Even without an accomplice, you'd still expect the player to make a few mistakes where he doesn't play the move he was told to. That would be likely to lead to occasional crass blunders, wouldn't it? They haven't happened, have they?

Wasn't there an endgame where he made an elementary blunder and lost?

This one?
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1703484

[White "Jovanic, Ognjen"] [Black "Ivanov, Borislav"] [Result "1-0"] [SetUp "1"] [FEN "8/4b3/1p3k2/pP1p4/P2Pp1K1/4P2N/8/8 b - - 0 115"] [PlyCount "6"] 115... Bd6 $4 (115... Ke6 $11) 116. Nf4 Bxf4 117. Kxf4 Ke6 118. Kg5 1-0

There's also a game where he made a weird Bishop move in a winning position - will have a look to see if I can find that one.

Edit: found it

[Event "Benidorm op U2300 11th"] [Site "Benidorm"] [Date "2012.12.06"] [Round "8"] [White "Ivanov, Borislav"] [Black "Tejedor Fuentes, Enrique"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "A64"] [WhiteElo "2201"] [BlackElo "2297"] [Annotator "Doe,John"] [SetUp "1"] [FEN "3r4/2q2k2/pnP1Rn1p/2p3p1/3p4/1PN2BPP/4QP2/6K1 w - - 0 35"] [PlyCount "25"] [EventDate "2012.11.30"] [EventType "swiss"] [EventRounds "10"] [EventCountry "ESP"] [SourceDate "2013.01.02"] 35. Bg4 $4 (35. Bh5+ $1 Nxh5 36. Qxh5+ Kxe6 37. Qxh6+ Ke7 38. Qg7+ {winning the Queen because of} Kd6 39. Qf6#) 35... dxc3 36. Qf3 Nbd5 37. Qf5 Kg7 38. Bd1 Qf7 39. Bc2 Re8 40. Rd6 a5 41. Kg2 Re2 42. Kg1 Re1+ 43. Kg2 Re2 44. Kf1 Rxc2 45. Qxc2 Ne3+ 46. fxe3 Ne4+ 47. Ke2 0-1

This one strikes me as particularly odd because Bg4 makes pretty much no sense at all, but is just a square off from the winning move. The complete game is:

[Event "Benidorm op U2300 11th"] [Site "Benidorm"] [Date "2012.12.06"] [Round "8"] [White "Ivanov, Borislav"] [Black "Tejedor Fuentes, Enrique"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "A64"] [WhiteElo "2201"] [BlackElo "2297"] [Annotator "Doe,John"] [PlyCount "93"] [EventDate "2012.11.30"] [EventType "swiss"] [EventRounds "10"] [EventCountry "ESP"] [SourceDate "2013.01.02"] 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. g3 c5 4. d5 exd5 5. cxd5 d6 6. Nc3 g6 7. Nf3 Bg7 8. Bg2 O-O 9. O-O Re8 10. Nd2 Nbd7 11. a4 a6 12. h3 Qc7 13. Nc4 Rb8 14. Bf4 Bf8 15. a5 b5 16. axb6 Nxb6 17. Na5 Bd7 18. Qd2 Nh5 19. Bh6 Bxh6 20. Qxh6 f5 21. e4 Nf6 22. exf5 Bxf5 23. Nc6 Ra8 24. Qg5 Kg7 25. Rfe1 h6 26. Qf4 Bd3 27. b3 g5 28. Qd2 Bg6 29. Rxe8 Bxe8 30. Re1 Bxc6 31. dxc6 d5 32. Re6 Rd8 33. Qe2 Kf7 34. Bf3 d4 35. Bg4 $4 dxc3 36. Qf3 Nbd5 37. Qf5 Kg7 38. Bd1 Qf7 39. Bc2 Re8 40. Rd6 a5 41. Kg2 Re2 42. Kg1 Re1+ 43. Kg2 Re2 44. Kf1 Rxc2 45. Qxc2 Ne3+ 46. fxe3 Ne4+ 47. Ke2 0-1

[Paolo Casaschi]

This page (from Kenneth Regan) is also interesting:

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess ... lfers.html

The policy which I set on this site almost five years ago is that the spot can only be physical or observational evidence of cheating, something independent of the consideration of chess analysis and statistical matching to a computer.

Thus the statistical analysis can only be supporting evidence of cheating, in cases that have some other concrete distinguishing mark.

Exactly my point: for a punishment like Ivanov's suspension you should need physical or observational evidence of cheating that is completely missing so far.

Yes, but... in the Chessbase article, Regan is quoted as saying:

"A bit of information in FM Valeri Lilov's new video that I regard as most surprising and important is that Ivanov took about ten seconds for most of his moves, regardless of position. GM Kiril Georgiev had stated this for his game against Ivanov in the rapid chess tournament in Kustendil (Bulgaria), where this would be less surprising. If that is true, then it meets the standards of observational evidence of cheating that I had in mind when composing my "Parable of the Golfers" policy page."

So maybe that observational evidence is there, but has not been properly assembled yet.

Using exactly 10 seconds for each move is NOT observational evidence. Observational evidence is to find out how he's cheating.

[Paolo Casaschi]

Stopping blatant (1st move with one engine) cheats isn't going to be enough for very long.

Ivanov may have found a method, but how do you consult a chess engine nearly every move in the context of a typical rapid play game, OTB league game or tournament? Isn't it enough to ensure that players are under observation nearly all the game? It's not going to catch premeditated cheating using specialist hardware and perhaps assistants, which is why it's important to understand Ivanov's method if there is one.

There's a funny anecdote about Karpov playing a rapid match of advanced chess (= chess with the help of an engine) against Anand. Not used to the computer and struggling with the short time allowance of a rapid game, the general consensus at the time was that Karpov played actually worse by consulting the computer than by plying all by himself. This to stress that many of Ivanov tournament wins are at very fast pace (rapid or faster): this should not be forgotten when making cheating hypotheses.

[Paolo Casaschi]

I wonder, if there is a method, and someone works it out, are they going to say anything...

No. They will send him to Guantanamo Bay without trial, lock him up in a cell and throw away the key.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I wonder, if there is a method, and someone works it out, are they going to say anything...

No. They will send him to Guantanamo Bay without trial, lock him up in a cell and throw away the key.

Yes. Anyway, I see Ivanov is not playing in the World Rapid and Bltiz tournament currently in progress:

http://wrbc2013.fide.com/

I wonder if you have to qualify for that or just pay an entry fee. I suppose the Bulgarians would have blocked him entering anyway. Ivan Cheparinov and Kirill Georgiev are the two Bulgarian-registered players present.

EDIT: Qualification criteria were: "All players rated at least 2500 in any of the three FIDE rating lists (Standard, Blitz or Rapid) as at the 1st of March 2013 are eligible to participate in the World Blitz Championship."

[MartinCarpenter]

The thing with trying to be 'smart' with the four top lines and assessments is transmitting all of that data back again. Very hard over the board.

Even transmitting the single 'best' move isn't easy. Its quite a bit more data than the original casino cases.
(Transmitting the board to the remote location is of course far from trivial.).

[Paolo Casaschi]

The thing with trying to be 'smart' with the four top lines and assessments is transmitting all of that data back again. Very hard over the board.

Not sure I understand what you mean. You dont have to send all the top 4 moves to the player and have him choose. You could have a small script on the computer running the engines that looks at the top moves from few engines, picks a random one (among the good ones) and sends that one move only for you to play. This is trivial.

The hard part is:
1) sending the game position to your computer helper (some of Ivanov tournament did not have live games from the tournament site)
2) receiving back the suggested move
3) doing all that at blitz/rapid pace WITHOUT ANYONE NOTICING HOW YOU DO IT EVEN IF ALL EYES ARE ON YOU

Item 3) is the really hard part.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Are there still images and/or video footage available of Ivanov in action at any of these tournaments where his performances have come under scrutiny? Still images from some, I've seen. Any video footage?

[MartinCarpenter]

From the posts way above cf computer cheating, even broadcasting one of the top four 'reasonable' computer moves would get caught by the statistical tests they use online. You get trapped into forced lines too often.
(And they match vs the top three choices anyway.).

So it is another thing to get past. Easy to do though mind - transmit something like the presence of an evaluation changing move or not via some binary sensor. That's both worth quite a bit strengthwise and essentially trivial to conceal. It is far from impossible that he might be doing something like this rather than full on move transmission. Or nothing at all, or....

Then your only challenge is secretly transmitting the board to wherever it needs to get processed. That thankfully isn't at all easy. When it does become so, competitive chess will have some very major problems.