On June 2, 2015 we
found two titled members to have cheated in our monthly Titled
Tuesday tournament. This blog serves as Chess.com's official
statement on the matter, and sheds light on our general stance on
cheating in online chess….Read more
IM Daniel
Rensch posted an article in which he explained Chessdotcom's stance
on a situation where two (OTB) titled players were banned for
cheating in an online cash prize tournament. Rensch explained, “The
systems we use to detect cheating are based on deep heuristics and
statistical evaluation.” Rensch also stated that there are
borderline-suspicious players who remain under constant scrutiny by
the chessdotcom staff.
Also, recently
there was a brouhaha about cheating accusations at the European
Women's Championship when a surprising result by one of the players
resulted in organizers granting a request from the players to delay
the transmission of live games. It seems a Romanian WGM scored 5 out
of 5 but when the 6th round games on the top two boards
were delayed due to technical difficulties, she lost. The result was
the participants thought more was involved than coincidence although
there was no proof based on the games themselves.
Things have
gotten more sophisticated; you don't have to fake bowel problems and
make frequent toilet visits any more...with the help of an accomplice
you can use mini-microphones, rig up Smart Phones, and work out a
code. As a result, phones are banned and the ban is enforced with
body scanners.
There has long
been cheating in correspondence chess by using engines and rather
than try and combat it, the ICCF abandoned rules against engine use.
Some sites make engine use illegal, but do nothing to prevent it
while other sites make vigorous efforts to ferret out engine users.
For a long time
casinos were plagued with cheaters.
Casino games are designed so that the house always makes more money
than the players, so cheating was justified by its practitioners by
claiming they were just evening the odds.
In 1972, an
engineer invented a portable computing device on his own that enabled
him to beat the blackjack tables in Nevada. With various contraptions
strapped to his chest and feet, he did pretty good for about 15
years. In 1984, an eccentric Ohioan found a simpler way to make the
most of new technology. On the new CBS TV game show Press Your Luck,
he noticed that the crucial prize board, instead of being truly
random, just recycled the same five patterns of flashing squares.
Using a video recorder, he got each pattern on tape and studied
them intensively. When he at last appeared on the show, he won
$110,237 in cash and prizes, the largest sum ever won on a game show
in one day. CBS could not discover any rule that he had broken,
despite a lot of trying, and paid in full.
Doping in
cycling and other sports, e-cheating in schools and universities are
a problem. Michael Dunn, a senior lecturer at the University of
Derby, observed, “Students are very good at getting round
anti-cheating technology. An arms race is underway.” He went
on to say, “The likelihood of someone cheating will be governed at
least in part by the availability of the means to do it, and the
probability of being caught multiplied by the consequences if caught.
In other words, I might still cheat if the likelihood of being caught
is high but the consequences low. Even if the likelihood of being
caught is low, I still might not cheat if the consequences are
negative enough. So the most effective strategy, given that cheating
is relatively easy, is to maintain high consequences.”
The point is
that cheating will always happen in any game when it is possible.
Online and correspondence chess is teeming with engine use. Chess
used to be a hard game to cheat at before the advent engines. When I
returned to correspondence chess in 2001 after a 12 year hiatus it
was with the firm belief that I could, with some effort, raise my
2000-plus rating to 2200 and gain the coveted Correspondence Master
title. It turned out not to be possible. I discovered that most
players in that range were using engines which were something about
which I new nothing at the time. In those early days engines had
quirks that could be exploited if you knew how and so beating them
was not impossible, but that didn't last long. These days being a
top level CC player means owning a $5000 computer dedicated to chess,
having a super-refined opening book and letting the engine run for
days at a time. So, unless you play at the lower levels of
correspondence chess, you won't have a lot of fun because nowadays
it's impossible to outwit an engine. I'm not into problems and
endgame compositions, but my guess is that engines have invaded that
area as well.
It Can't
Happen Here is a 1935 political novel by American author Sinclair
Lewis that was published during the rise of fascism in Europe that
describes the rise of a United States Senator who is elected to the
presidency after promising drastic economic and social reforms while
promoting a return to patriotism and traditional values. Don't they all do that?! Anyway, after his
election, he takes complete control of the government and imposes a
plutocratic/totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless
paramilitary force, in the manner of Adolf Hitler and the SS. Don't they all try it?! As
distasteful as the thought is, the reality is that it could happen
here for real.
As we are
beginning to witness, OTB chess cheating is, little by little,
getting more sophisticated. Yes, it could happen here, too. It's
only a matter of time.
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