There was a situation at a team tournament where two players were caught cheating by copying the moves on the other board. They both had the games forfeited. For rating purposes, would these games be counted as forfeit wins or regular wins that would affect ratings?
Whether the games actually count for rating would depend on how the results are coded when the rating report is completed.
Since moves were played, I believe the results should count for rating purposes.
So do I - these are rated. A forfeit win which is not rated is a game that was never played.
It’s late so maybe I don’t get it? Was this a case of two players playing the same moves they saw in another game? Did the other two players realize they were being copied? How was this even cheating unless both players in the same game agreed to a pre-arranged result?
Procedurally, we do what the TD tells us to do. If the game is to be rated, the TD submits it as a rated game, if it is submitted as a forfeit then it is not rated.
In this situation it is not clear whether the players were playing two different games or were playing each other.
If the latter, this could be a situation in which BOTH players in a game are given a rated (eg non-forfeit) loss, though not every TD might make that decision.
As with situations in which both players get a rated win or one player gets a rated win and the other gets a rated draw, these are unusual and rare situations, ones that tax a TD’s knowledge and skills.
In a team tournament if my teammate and I are copying our opponents moves, then effectively we have set the 2 players on the other team to play against one another, guaranteeing our team of at least 1 point. If we do that on the 2 boards were our team is the weakest compared to the opposing team, then we make it more likely we win the match.
One obvious counter is to get both games into mutual time pressure with the stronger players on one team using pretty much the entire delay time, slowly driving the other team closer and closer to flagging until they actually do so. If the weaker players are not planted in their seats then a relatively quick move while a player is away from the board makes the time pressure counter even stronger.
This is the same way to counter two weak players on boards one and two in the first round opting to do the same thing and thus have a game where the two strongest players are essentially meeting in round one.
Another obvious counter is to throw the bums out, give both of them a loss, and disqualify them from the rest of the tournament. Also, if it is discovered that there was a coach who was in any way involved in this scheme, try to get him fired.
I know these sorts of incidents are rare, but when I read about such awful behavior at scholastic events, I am truly appalled.
IL HS Chess has 8 board matches.
Several years ago, one of the top competitor teams was facing our high school when we were considered favorites to repeat as state champion.
Their first board coached their other players to all play the Stonewall, as White and as Black on all 8 boards. No OVERT attempt was being made to copy games - although of course it was possible as a result. The reason for this was to try to simplify the match and help all of his players, even the weakest ones, play a solid position that would keep them in the match as long as possible, thus increasing the possibility of an upset.
OUR players had all been coached on how to play against this, by avoiding playing either (as White/Black) d4/d5 and instead playeing d3/d6 followed by Nc3/Nc6 and e4/45.
So AS A CONSEQUENCE, all 8 games were highly similar, although again, no overt attempts were being made by either side to “copy” games.
We won the match 7.5-.5. (In weighted game points it was 63.5-4.5 IIRC.)
Questions:
- How would a TD, through observation alone, differentiate this situation from the situation described?
- Does anyone view the situation above as illegal and/or illegitimate, and why?
The answer to question 1 is to observe the behavior of the players involved. If a copying attempt is being made (and in this case it wasn’t) the players would have to be exactly copying the games and this would require constantly looking at tbe other boards for reference.
As for question 2, the first board of an outgunned team gave what he thought was the best advice. The result demonstrated that it was not. The biggest mistake substantially weaker players can make when facing superior opponents is attempting to play a dry positional game. The first board tried to show some leadership and was thinking about the team this is not cheating.
Heck, I’m not sure how you would consider the original situation cheating, and what you could do about it.
Alex Relyea
Back to the original topic, in deciding whether the game should be rated, perhaps one should ask “does this result provide any useful information to the rating system?”. If you look at it that way, the answer is clear: no, the game should not be rated.
Bill Smythe
I agree with your comments - but a key point that I’m trying to raise is that even if we believe that the first situation is cheating, it may be difficult or impossible to differentiate from a situation that is innocent. After appx 8 moves, all 8 boards likely had the same position or a very close position (although sometimes the positions were reversed.) Team members often look at the positions of their teammates during a game, and the novelty of the situation certainly encouraged team members to look. This may have led to some similar moves although no overt attempt at copying was attended. (I should note that while a few games ended in very similar ways, none of these games were immediately next to each other.)
Note that reasonably, one could argue that both situations were technically cheating, although the description of one as “not overt” and the other as “intentional” clearly influences the way people think.
I truly believe that no one on my team, including myself, intended to copy - we were focused on taking advantage of what we considered a bad line - and this happened to have been repeated on every board. But if someone had made an accusation - I’m really not certain how to clearly defend it.
So my point is - if we believe that such situations can be innocent, and if we believe that it can be difficult to distinguish by observations these situations from less honorable ones, then we should make any accusations only with great care.
If the opposing team played the same bad line on every board, they most likely did so because they had been studying that line, perhaps as part of a team preparation meeting / pep talk, without the benefit of a knowledgeable advisor. In this case one would expect several of the games to be similar.
Bill Smythe
Since Micah provided so few details of the situation, it is hard to tell what really happened. We do not even know for sure if this was a USCF rated event or rated by NWRS. No extra information was given on how it was determined there was cheating. Details matter because assumptions are being made that would change the resultant actions on scene and by the body that rates the event.
Let us assume, based on what little Micah presented, that this incident was sent to the Ethics Committee. Would they take it or reject it out of hand for lack of information? Cheating is a serious charge.
The assumption is that the details provided by Mr. Smith are correct.
If a player has a game in progress forfeited for a rules violation, that game is generally rated, regardless of the rules violation in question.
There are situations, thankfully not seen much, in which a game should not be rated even though both players have made moves.
These are when there is no ‘sporting contest’. An extreme example of this (though TDs seldom choose this penalty) is when players collude on the result of a game, ie, a pre-arranged draw.
I once had a player (a former master) play a game against a player who was maybe 1100 on his good days. When the former master lost, after making more than a few silly moves, I refused to rate the game and I disqualified the former master from the tournament.
Ethics Committee cases have an initial jurisdictional phase during which only the applicability of the Code to the charges is considered. Since game cheating is explicitly covered by the Code, the case would probably be accepted. The actual quantity and quality of the evidence would not be examined during this phase.
Just so you know, if you had sent this question to the Committee instead of posting it here, they would have refused to answer. Some years ago when I was still on the Committee, a formal policy was adopted never to answer hypothetical questions.
– Hal Terrie