Can anyone give examples of actual chess cheating? Lets limit the time frame to say the last 20 years. I’m looking for cheating by individuals during the tournamant, not necessarily sandbagging as cheating. Not looking for “The Russians cheated in order to maintain the world championship.” I want actual examples of confirmed cheating by individuals where they have been caught.
Or maybe examples of highly suspicious events where cheating was suspected but no one was able to prove it. Maybe Mike Nolan can give us a list of USCF members that have had their memberships revoked for cheating.
Yes, with prizes and technology at their current points, I think this is a serious issue that we should be aware of. I don’t think the current level of paranoia is appropriate, however.
I’ve never seen a case in a serious game. I’ve never heard a complaint in any tournament I’ve been to.
I’ve never actually played against anyone that I thought was sandbagging, either (though I am sure there are some pathetic sandbaggers out there somewhere).
I have played against a sandbagger. It was a fellow from India that was here for a stint working in Bloomington.
During our game, he played a few obviously poor moves for his strength and ability. He then resigned in just a slightly inferior position.
My friend from the area that runs the chess club there and also directs the majority of rated tournaments also knew that he sandbagged. He would go to the World Open and the Chicago Open in pursuit of big prizes. Interestingly, his play in the local tournaments diminished in quality for about 4 to 6 months before Memorial Day (Chicago Open) and he really played strongly starting in July or August after the World Open.
Other than that I have only heard urban legend stories of cheaters and have never seen nor heard of any, especially at local tournaments with paltry prizes.
well this is scholastic chess, but there were two instances that i witnessed at the NJHS championship last weekend.
girl would take pieces that were captured and place them back on the board and try to confuse/razzle her opponent til he decided it was on the board but just not in that place. She also would change her scoresheet and her opponents while he was in the bathroom when she was in an inferior position then call a td and claim the position was wrong. when rebuilding from scoresheets she got the position she wanted. She was booted from the tournament after round 5 and the 4th instance of her cheating.
Boy claimed he was sick and told his opponent he was going to get medicine from his coach. b4 he left he diagramed the position quickly and took his notation with him. Boy claimed he did it so his opponent wouldn’t 'mess with his scoresheet or the board" Could basically tell the boy was lying but he got so frazzled from the threat of being booted from the national he went on to lose this game and always gave his scoresheet to the TD or scorekeeper from that point on when he left the room.
What I have been thinking about doing, just have my cell phone on with a ear piece. I can just sit down for the game, the person on the other end of the phone can tell me the moves from Fritz 9.0. When my victim makes a move, say the move so the person on the other line can pick up the call.
If my victim question the ear piece, just pull out one of the most common music device. My victim will just think it is for music and leave me alone. Who says I have to take my sports coat off.
I believe that Tim Just posted previously about an issue in one of the sections of the HB tournament involving a cell phone and a partner on another floor with Fritz on a laptop.
In adult tournaments there have been players that would “erroneously” make an illegal move in the hopes that the opponent doesn’t notice and they can get away with saving an otherwise unsaveable position. Unless the TD feels that the attempt was deliberate, the only penalty is likely to be the 2-minute time adjustment. If the TD knows that a player has a history of doing this then the penalty might be much more severe.
Players have been known to deliberately violate touch move (with no unbiased witnesses) in an attempt to rattle their opponents. That happened to a friend of mine at a major tournament we were both attending. We found out later that if he had appealed the floor TD’s ruling (that touch move couldn’t be proven and thus couldn’t be enforced) then he would have gotten up to a TD that knew the player’s history and would have either simply enforced touch move on the opponent, or would have penalized the opponent with an immediate loss.
In the last few years at a speed chess tournament where an illegal move meant loss of game, some players with white made their first move and declined to hit the clock. If black then responded then white would claim that the move was illegal since it was still white’s turn, and that black had thus lost. This actually worked with one TD.
In one scholastic tournament I worked there was a kid many moons ago that temporarily left his game, went to the batchroom, then went to the school’s team room, picked up a couple of pieces, and returned to his game and put them on the board when his opponent glanced away. He probably figured that he wouldn’t be able the retrieve his captured pieces that were sitting next to the opponent without the opponent seeming him reaching for them. The chief TD ejected him from the tournament and his coach ejected him from the school’s team.
At a National Elementary some time back there was a kid who claimed that the result had been incorrectly reported and he and his parent came to get it corrected. In his scorebook he had a scoresheet of the game that clearly showed that he had built up an advantage and won. I’m not sure, but I think it was a section that did not require taking score, so having a scoresheet was more evidence than you get most of the time. When the chief TD was looking at it, it was noticed that there was an earlier scoresheet for the same two players where the opponent had won (subsequently verified with the opponent). The boy was ejected from the tournament.
By the way, that is one reason why getting an incorrectly reported result changed generally requires that the opponent also agree that the result was incorrectly reported. Fortunately, in scholastics opponents are generally quick to agree that a result was reported wrong.
I’ve been playing more than thirty years and I can’t think of any time an opponent attempted to cheat against me. There have been opponents that have made illegal moves, but the time pressure situations or the inexperience of the opponent made those understandable.
if someone has an earpiece in and I can’t clearly see the object the earpiece is going to, i ask them to show it to me and leave it on the table. Also the earpieces for mp3 players and cellphones look a lot different.
Sceptic, just try any of the things you suggested at your next tournament, and once you are caught and banned we won’t have to worry about you (:
I spent most of the Far West Open this weekend plugged into my IPOD. In the pre-game introduction phase, I always showed them the IPOD, and asked them if they had any problems with it. It either stayed on the table or in a shirt pocket. More than half of the time, my opponent had one too. I think at least 1/3 of the people there were plugged into headphones of some sort. I really hope we don’t get to the point where all headphones are banned in all tournaments just because a small percentage of people decide they want to try and cheat.
Anything can be used to cheat. Should we be paranoid? no. I once had a guy in a weekend tournament that had burned a CD where each track was his voice listing moves to different openings. So a CDplayer / Mp3 player could be used to cheat.
SHould we be paranoid and ban them? no.
if someone suspects this and calls me to the table, what do i do? I take the CD player and listen to it and flip through tracks. heard the chess moves, forfeited them and forfeited them in their earlier games as well. The next tournament he came back and didn’t have a cd player, I let him play but said if he was caught in anything again, i’d ban him and report it to uscf.
People can get paranoid over anything.
Have you heard the one where the players were coughing moves to each other in morse code?
(:
I hadn’t thought about the liability thing when I asked Mike to post the names of players who had their memberships revoked due to cheating. Fortunately everyone so far has had the wisdom to leave out names. Maybe just a number would do?
I googled chess cheating and came up with an incident last November where a real high rated player susposeably took a dive. No proof other than a poorly played game for his rating level.
In the case of the girl redoing her score sheet, maybe all players should be required to use ink. Ban Pencils
And I searched on the word cheat here and came up with 34 topics.
You’re being silly. The TD at a big tournament would tell you to take it off, and forfeit you if you refused. If you don’t have anything sensible to say, you really should keep quiet.
There was at least one incident at the HB tournament last year (someone using a cell phone from a different part of the buiding). I know of several at the World Open, including a notorious one about a decade ago in which the player entered with the obviously false name “John von Neumann.” This was caught when someone apparently entered the wrong move in his computer, whereupon the headphone-wearer made made an insane move because he was told to. He didn’t get a prize.
Unfortunately in all my years of running scholastic tournaments I’ve come across my share of cheating. I find it very sad when children feel the pressure to lie about results or to do something like the un-named girl at JH nationals.
At 1992 Elementary Nationals I was doing the computer for the Primary section and had a player and his coach come to complain about his result being wrong. I checked the result slips and it showed him as losing. I sat the two players down with their scoresheets, and played out the game. It turned out the player who had “won” actually lost, but volunteered to take the result slip to the score’s table. This was in the days before the slips got collected at the board from the floor TD. I think it was incidents like this that caused the procedure to change.
Another time I was running CT state scholastic championship and had similar problem except this time there was no scoresheet. I spoke to each player individually and asked them to show me how they won the game. They both produced pretty much the same checkmate, but naturally with colors reversed. Then I brought them both into the room together and asked both them who won. The “winner” started squirming and could not look me in the eye and say he won. His body lnguage totally gave him away, and finally he admitted that he did not win.
Then there was the kid who was notorious for denying touch move violations, or trying to nail his opponents for touch move. It was very sad to see.
There were also some well known incidents of a player taking time off an opponent’s clock when he was out of the room. The sad thing about this particular incident was that the kid in question was actually a very talented player.
Most of these types of incidents I’v seen have been with yound kids in primary sections. I often wonder what causes kids to do this type of stuff. Even though I feel it’s terribly wrong, I can see the motivation when there is large amounts of money on the line (World Open, HB, Chicago, etc.), but many of the children I’ve seen cheat are not going to win much. Is a trophy or a few ill gotten rating points worth it?
At some point children learn the difference between right and wrong and that it’s important to do the right thing even if you won’t get caught. I don’t think you’ll find many adults that haven’t learned this.
You’ll find lots of children that have committed petty offenses for minimal gains (like shoplifting candy), but hopefully they will outgrow such behaviour.
Unfortunately, I have found that sometimes it is the parents who encourage and reinforce this behavior in their kids. I am sometimes surprised at what the parents will do just to have their kids bring home another trophy.
Wow, now that’s really sad. What’s the point of a victory if it wasn’t earned? This is CHESS we’re talking about – an intellectual competition. If you didn’t win the game based on your own ability, then how can you consider it an accomplishment and take pride in what you did?
I’ll just consider myself fortunate that I haven’t met any parents that far around the bend (AFAIK).
So far what I have gotten out of this discussion is that cheating does exist. Although compared to the number of games played it is very minor percentage.
It also seems that cheating spans ages and playing abilities. The samples include a range of young and not so good players to the older and very good players.
Does it seem reasonable that if some people are getting caught then there are others getting away with Cheating?
Can there be habitual tournament cheaters?
Can someone put a percentage to the number of cheaters?
