Tim, with the number and value of scholarships being awarded, it is bound to happen. It is also sad that many peoples attitude iis if you don’t get caught, you are not cheating, or everyone else is doing it.
Why hack the hardware? It’s cheaper and easier to gut the internals and replace it with an unauthorized core.
If someone is going to cheat they are going to cheat regardless of controls. You think you’re making it harder for them to cheat but you’re not. You just give them more avenues for creativity.
You’re entitled to your opinion. If you want Chess Pad authorized then do what I did and send it to the rules committee for testing for controls.
At the end of the day, an organizer is still allowed to disallow any electronic scoresheet. There is no mandate forcing an organizer to allow it.
I DON’T want ChessPad to be approved. Not in it’s current form.
I’m told there are “anti hacking” security features in the MonRoi. I don’t think you could just scrap the guts and replace them and still talk to the MonRoi tournament hub, for example.
Again, I think it’s POSSIBLE to make reasonably secure software. I’m not convinced eNotate is quite there.
Don’t get me wrong: what I’d most like to see is the software made properly secure – I’d much rather see this than having the approval taken back.
I’m familiar with software and hardware hacking like this. It’s impossible to make a product that’s “unhackable”. But you can make one that’s not PRACTICAL to hack. That’s what we should be working toward.
If you think that way that’s your choice but you’re wrong about gutting the internals. Whoever also said I need to hack the communication between a PCM and PTM?
Also where does it say that a PTM is required to be used by an organizer if PCM’s are being used?
Make recommendations then. What else would you like to see? What do you think are required for internal controls.
We’re already working on an internal authentication schema however we’re always open to suggestions.
To this day, nothing bothers me more than cheaters, those that tolerate cheating, and those that are supposed to stop it taking the easy route and pretending not to notice. Those that are going to cheat are going to cheat, but it is naïve to think that it does not happen.
In a perfect world, we would have devices that interface with the board, record the move, and have it be downloadable to personal devices. You would not be able to view it during a game, and I would still have you write down your moves. If kids could program the handheld devices 35 years ago to cheat, I’m sure you can find hundreds of posts on how to do it on the internet, with someone probably already marketing a Mon Roi that could do it for those with cash and no morals.
You wouldn’t leave your cell phone on the table in such a situation, either, I suspect. (Turned off, of course.)
I’ve actually run a tournament where EARLY IN A ROUND one player made his move, punched the clock, and then got up to walk around. Shortly after, the other player made his response, punched the clock and also got up to walk around. Two or three minutes later they both come back to the table to find NO clock. The nearby players were all busy concentrating on their games and did not notice anyone walk up to the table, grab the clock and leave. We never found the missing clock, either.
Maybe two of those nearby players were busy not looking at the scene of the crime.
eNOTATE is a step in the right direction. If you remember the “Cat in the Hat”, he may have been working on pattern recognition soft ware. The lack of a gyro-stabilized camera may explain why he held his head in his hands so much during the match. Soon we will have tools to record the game in real time, display the moves and produce a score sheet. Cheating is just a byproduct of inovation.
I know this is a little bit of an old post, but I wanted to jump in here because I am in the process of getting eNotate, and love the price compared to that of the MonRoi.
Casinos literally spend billions of dollars trying to prevent people from cheating, yet people still manage to do so, yet “casual” cheaters are detered. Chess simply does not have the money to even eliminate 99% of the cheaters if they are determined. We live in a world where ear pieces can be pretty much invisible, you can rig shoes to give vibrations in different places for different signals and a myriad of other ways people attempt to cheat.
Fortunately Chess does not have nearly the monetary incentive to cheat that gambling in casinos does.
The goal of Chess just simply CANNOT be to eliminate cheating all together, it’s just not possible. Rather, it should be to make cheating hard enough to discourage all but the hard core cheaters, then make the penalties for cheating as severe as possible, and focus on ways to detect cheaters, rather then prevent them.
The MonRoi / eNotate issue is a perfect example. Yes it is totally possible that somebody could hack EITHER device and cheat. Yet somebody so dedicated to cheating could also devise other ways to cheat as well. So is it worth ruining the use of MonRois or eNotate for all the honest users? Probably not, because the end result is still the same.
Mike Friedel