Re: European Women's Championship 2015
Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 3:23 pm
Ketevan's win in round 3 today of the Rapidplay was in a position which looks even. Maybe she won on time ?
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I used the airport security analogy to make a point which has nothing to do with the seriousness of the crime being prevented, viz, that if you know that you have been randomly singled out to be searched, rather than, eg, because you look guilty, then you can't claim that you are being victimised. Similarly, Ray Sayers made an analogy with drinking and driving, and it is, again, incidental to his point that drink driving is a far more serious crime than cheating at a game.John Saunders wrote:I don't think you can sensibly draw a parallel between security measures taken to prevent mass murder and security measures taken to prevent people cheating at chess.Keith Arkell wrote:With a random search policy in operation, players can have no reason to resent being picked on - in the same way that we don't really mind having our bags thoroughly searched at airport security.
The idea of random searches is, frankly, ludicrous.
Ray Sayers wrote a very good post here about this general subject a couple of years ago...
Ray Sayers, 2013 wrote: You can't stop people from drinking and driving, but you can ban them from driving when they are caught. So make the penalty for being caught cheating a 2 year ban from competition. People can of course appeal but that should be the penalty.
It's quite common for larger shops to have security devices on their goods and detectors at the shop's exit. They don't just secure high value items; it's also low value, small items which they presumably think are at high risk of theft. It doesn't seem to deter people from going in the shop, even though the alarms are sometimes triggered incorrectly (e.g. my work pass has set them off before). If the alarm does go off, the security staff ask to search you, and you refuse, what happens next?John Saunders wrote:A better parallel than the OTT one quoted above is with shoplifting. I suppose shopkeepers could impose something akin to airport security before allowing customers (or "potential shoplifters") into their premises but my guess is they wouldn't get many customers if they permitted themselves to conduct, say, random frisking of customers.
And chess cheating is not a 'crime', either, unless one can interpret it as attempted fraud. The main point is that there is unlikely to be a workable and affordable up-front solution to prevent people cheating. (Game analysis software can do the job after the event - maybe.) A secondary important point is that most chess is played by amateurs who are the customers of tournaments, and I venture to suggest that most people don't shell out money to play in chess tournaments for the privilege of being frisked by an arbiter, at the behest of some paranoid twit who thinks they might be cheating. Or to have their children treated similarly. Such a procedure would be utterly humiliating and stupid. Chess simply isn't important enough to be worth putting anyone through that sort of nonsense. It is punishing the many innocents in a misguided attempt to nab a handful of the guilty.John Saunders wrote:Shoplifting is a fact of life which we all have to live with and keep in perspective. Chess cheating is the same, except that it is rather less important.
The laws of over the board chess have always prohibited external consultation. This included asking your higher rated friend and looking up the theory at the bookstall. You also want to be above suspicion, so a rule that says that mobile phones and other devices including personal computers should be switched off before the game starts and remain switched off for the whole game is an obvious standard. It's complicated a bit in amateur play that a mobile phone might inadvertently be left switched on, this can be countered by an easement that requires it to be switched off even if it does ring or beep.John Saunders wrote: The whole anti-cheating edifice has grown out of all proportion, mainly because FIDE would insist on inserting their ludicrous mobile phone wording into the laws in the first place.
I give up.John Saunders wrote:The only sensible solution is to remove it all and replace it with nothing.... A few cheats might get away with a few quid, here and there. So what?
Another very good point from Paolo. I've been ploughing through these recommendations and am not impressed. The guidelines go off the rails almost immediately:Paolo Casaschi wrote:... the recommendations of the anti-cheating commission got things wrong: I believe it's wrong to encourage players to file complaints and reports against other players; it creates an awful environment in chess tournaments, as clearly demonstrated by the recent events. Policing correctness belong to the arbiters/referees; chess players are way too keen creating excuses for a loss and do not need an easy route as "my opponent is obviously cheating (even if I have no idea how)". Whatever is done, it should be done by a third party.
I'm far from convinced that the first part of the sentence leads inexorably into the second. Why is it axiomatic that the laws of chess must be changed? As a former civil servant, I can see Sir Humphrey at work here. Possibly as the result of something embarrassing in the press, someone in authority decides that "something must be done", so he sets up a committee. The committee is saddled with the immediate psychological problem that all committees face: it needs to show it is doing something. If, in examining the problem, it discovers that it is actually not nearly so big or pressing a problem as everybody seems to think, or that it would cost £10m to address the problem which is only costing £1m in the first place, it finds itself in a quandary. To go back and say it recommends little or no action risks embarrassing the top brass, who meanwhile have been harrumphing self-importantly about what a terrible problem it is. So what does the committee do? They recommend doing something, which is more than likely to be unworkable and pointlessly expensive.Anti-Cheating Guidelines wrote:The ACC recognizes that computer-assisted cheating poses a major perceived threat to the integrity
and credibility of chess, and that immediate action is required to adjust the existing Laws of Chess and Regulations accordingly.
Just a reminder, the rule about switching off mobile phones was originally intended against the disturbance of a mobile ringing with a loud ta-da-da-ta-ta while you were trying to think about an unknown opening gambit that appeared on your board; hence the much required draconian rule: if your phone rings you lose the game; the cheating issue came only later and only later the restriction was added not to have a mobile phone on you and so on.John Saunders wrote:Of course, mobile phones and other gadgets must be switched off during play
Just to prove that I don't agree with everything you say, Paolo...Paolo Casaschi wrote:I agree very much with John's comment (especially when he's saying I'm right ), even if downplaying the cheating issue seems very unpopular at the moment.Just a reminder, the rule about switching off mobile phones was originally intended against the disturbance of a mobile ringing with a loud ta-da-da-ta-ta while you were trying to think about an unknown opening gambit that appeared on your board; hence the much required draconian rule: if your phone rings you lose the game; the cheating issue came only later and only later the restriction was added not to have a mobile phone on you and so on.John Saunders wrote:Of course, mobile phones and other gadgets must be switched off during play
The trouble is, we don't know. I understand that FIDE were only pushed into doing something, rather late in the day in my view, when some really top GMs, who would I think be accepted by everyone here as very sensible people, expressed the view that it might be only a matter of time before it overwhelmed their profession.John Saunders wrote: I'm not sure there is as big a problem here as everybody seems to think.
The article is dated 5/13/2015, or 13th May in English.NickFaulks wrote: I have just found this, from March.
http://en.chessbase.com/post/tkachiev-h ... r-in-chess
If this is the fundamental issue, here is a wild idea: I would not mind if the anti-cheating measures were applied only to titled players (hence capturing all semi-professional and above), leaving the rest of up patzers to enjoy the game. And now you can have those rules as strict as you like. It would be the same as the zero-tolerance rule: I completely agree it makes sense in top competitions, with sponsors, dignitaries and the press lined up... but it does not make any sense for my games at the LCC open.NickFaulks wrote:The trouble is, we don't know. I understand that FIDE were only pushed into doing something, rather late in the day in my view, when some really top GMs, who would I think be accepted by everyone here as very sensible people, expressed the view that it might be only a matter of time before it overwhelmed their profession.
No, I was being serious.Paolo Casaschi wrote:
PS: by any chance, was Mamedyarov one of those top GMs?