Cheating in chess

Discuss anything you like about chess related matters in this forum.
Geoff Chandler
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Geoff Chandler » Fri May 07, 2021 12:50 pm

Hi Roger L.

It is off topic (guilty) though the 'Cheating in Chess' title has somewhat been overtaken by online cheating.

Online cheating has gone on for the past 20 years, it was about then playing online sites appeared.
It barely raised a post or two before Covid. Once things return to normal (which is beginning to sound a lot like 'When I Win The Lottery!')
we will back to OTB chess and that is the area where cheating must be stamped out because money and titles are in the mix.
(and I suppose I had better mention OTB grades as well because I know the four digits mean a lot to some of you.)

Chasing naughty school boys and mysterious sandbaggers is a waste of time and effort. Leave them be.
The software and hardware should be focused on the OTB cheats and the punishment should be severe.

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JustinHorton
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by JustinHorton » Fri May 07, 2021 2:54 pm

Geoff Chandler wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 12:50 pm
It barely raised a post or two before Covid
More than seven hundred posts on this thread prior to the end of 2019
"Do you play chess?"
"Yes, but I prefer a game with a better chance of cheating."

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Geoff Chandler
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Geoff Chandler » Fri May 07, 2021 6:02 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 2:54 pm
Geoff Chandler wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 12:50 pm
It barely raised a post or two before Covid
More than seven hundred posts on this thread prior to the end of 2019

Hi Justin,

This thread started over concerns with OTB cheating. Online cheating took over when covid appeared.
(obviously because there was no OTB chess going on) but this thread really took off when everyone was going online.

I started a thread about possible online cheating in 2013, it ran for a page and half then lay dormant for 6 years, you actually resurrected it.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6064&hilit=Sued&start=15#p236520

Hopefully online cheating topics will again lay dormant....till the 3rd wave. Then the we can all come here again.

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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Paul McKeown » Fri May 07, 2021 6:43 pm

I think FIDE should consult a master plumber with regard to the Osmak case. It is clearly utter ballcocks.

I was sorry to read a few pages ago about Lorin D'Costa's mishap, which I was previously unaware of. It is also clearly absurd, paranoid and evidence of a nasty mind that anyone would use what was obviously a stupid blunder to accuse him of cheating, never mind for anyone to demand that he apologises. He made a mistake, was forfeited and lost Elo. Enough, and be done with any snide comments.

Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Geoff Chandler
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Geoff Chandler » Fri May 07, 2021 7:04 pm

Hi Paul,

"I think FIDE should consult a master plumber...."

Nimzovitch was a master plumber....he wrote 'My Cistern.'

Roger Lancaster
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger Lancaster » Sat May 08, 2021 7:42 am

Paul McKeown wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 6:43 pm
I think FIDE should consult a master plumber with regard to the Osmak case. It is clearly utter ballcocks.

I was sorry to read a few pages ago about Lorin D'Costa's mishap, which I was previously unaware of. It is also clearly absurd, paranoid and evidence of a nasty mind that anyone would use what was obviously a stupid blunder to accuse him of cheating, never mind for anyone to demand that he apologises. He made a mistake, was forfeited and lost Elo. Enough, and be done with any snide comments.

Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Everyone should be aware that the FIDE Arbiters Manual, at B06 [Annex 6] on page 64, indicates that concerns about alleged cheating should be communicated to the tournament arbiter[s] and no-one else. It goes on to include the following:

"If a player has genuine concerns about another competitor, and does not share that opinion with other players, then no action should be taken against the player making the accusation. Where the accusation is malicious or is shared with other players, especially when it starts a vendetta, the player making the accusations should be punished severely and reported to FIDE".

This wording clearly relates to player A making an accusation against player B in the same event. I'd be interested to hear the views of experienced arbiters but, in my opinion, it's inadequate for at least two reasons.

First, while FIDE-recognised events will always have an arbiter or arbiters with whom a genuine complainant can register his concerns, it leaves open the appropriate means of recourse where cheating is believed to have occurred in events [eg league chess] without an obvious arbiter. Secondly, the passage covers only the situation where player A makes an inappropriate complaint but not where third parties do so. Inter alia, I fear that it's far from clear to me what sanction is available to FIDE if the person making the inappropriate complaint is not a FIDE member.

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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Alex McFarlane » Sat May 08, 2021 8:38 am

Hi Roger,

As someone who had some input into this document can I firstly state the obvious. This is advice for arbiters. If there is no arbiter present then the advice cannot be implemented.

The official FIDE form requires a FIN. Obviously, if the person is not registered with FIDE this makes things extremely difficult.
I would also, if it was a parent, request that they made the complaint in their child's name BUT warn them that the sanctions for a malicious complaint could therefore be applied to their child.

A spectator can be banned from the playing venue. Obviously this does not stop them from spreading rumours in the local pub, etc, but it should prevent petitions being displayed alongside pairing lists, etc.

A well organised league will have an arbiter or arbiter's panel to whom complaints can be made, obviously retrospectively and therefore much more difficult to investigate as the arbiter cannot witness the accused's actions so it could develop into a "he said, she said" type situation.

The FIDE Arbiters' Manual is, as it says on the tin, a manual for arbiters. It is therefore not designed to give advice in the situation you describe and nor should it be.

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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger Lancaster » Sat May 08, 2021 12:01 pm

Alex McFarlane wrote:
Sat May 08, 2021 8:38 am
Hi Roger,

As someone who had some input into this document can I firstly state the obvious. This is advice for arbiters. If there is no arbiter present then the advice cannot be implemented.

The official FIDE form requires a FIN. Obviously, if the person is not registered with FIDE this makes things extremely difficult.
I would also, if it was a parent, request that they made the complaint in their child's name BUT warn them that the sanctions for a malicious complaint could therefore be applied to their child.

A spectator can be banned from the playing venue. Obviously this does not stop them from spreading rumours in the local pub, etc, but it should prevent petitions being displayed alongside pairing lists, etc.

A well organised league will have an arbiter or arbiter's panel to whom complaints can be made, obviously retrospectively and therefore much more difficult to investigate as the arbiter cannot witness the accused's actions so it could develop into a "he said, she said" type situation.

The FIDE Arbiters' Manual is, as it says on the tin, a manual for arbiters. It is therefore not designed to give advice in the situation you describe and nor should it be.
Alex, I totally accept the document is what it says on the tin, ie. advice for arbiters. At the same time, I think you'll accept that it's no defence for a player to say "I didn't know there was a penalty attached to doing ... " and, consequently, it makes sense for all serious players to have at least some idea of what arbiters expect of them. I'd suggest there's an approximate parallel with the legal dictum, across all the UK nations, that ignorance of the law is no excuse. It's probably unfair to expect you to comment on a question which I didn't explicitly ask but - if players can be sanctioned and spectators expelled for publicly accusing players of cheating - is it acceptable that online platforms be permitted to do so?

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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Alex McFarlane » Sat May 08, 2021 12:21 pm

I might dodge that question slightly.

In a fair society, someone should know exactly what they are being accused of and the evidence against them. I would expect this to be the case in a FIDE, ECF or Chess Scotland event. In private events I would hope that was the case too but there the organiser decides.
If the player is not happy with the organiser they go elsewhere. They also tell their friends and persuade them to do the same.

With online, there seems to be a reluctance with players to insist on a more open system (and I do understand all of the reasons that a platform does not want to reveal its methods). If it was felt that a platform was making mistakes regarding accusations of cheating, then players do not have to use that platform. There are plenty of others. If all players adopted that approach the platform would need to be more open or to close down.

It seems to me that a players union is needed to co-ordinate action. Individuals will never force a platform to change. It would require a critical mass to do so. As with many other matters, apathy rules.

Roger Lancaster
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger Lancaster » Sat May 08, 2021 12:57 pm

Alex McFarlane wrote:
Sat May 08, 2021 12:21 pm
I might dodge that question slightly.

In a fair society, someone should know exactly what they are being accused of and the evidence against them. I would expect this to be the case in a FIDE, ECF or Chess Scotland event. In private events I would hope that was the case too but there the organiser decides.
If the player is not happy with the organiser they go elsewhere. They also tell their friends and persuade them to do the same.

With online, there seems to be a reluctance with players to insist on a more open system (and I do understand all of the reasons that a platform does not want to reveal its methods). If it was felt that a platform was making mistakes regarding accusations of cheating, then players do not have to use that platform. There are plenty of others. If all players adopted that approach the platform would need to be more open or to close down.

It seems to me that a players union is needed to co-ordinate action. Individuals will never force a platform to change. It would require a critical mass to do so. As with many other matters, apathy rules.
Alex - I'm broadly in agreement with those sentiments although it's not always so easy to "go elsewhere" as, both over-the-board and online, organised chess can be something of an oligarchy. To take a random example, if one disagrees with the 4NCL rules [which, by and large, I don't] then one can decide not to compete but it's unlikely that too many others will do the same as a result.

It's not quite true that individuals will never force platforms to change - as you may be aware, last summer I complained to FIDE [via a parent so affected] about the Lichess practice of publicly singling out children, in particular, as using computer assistance which was clearly tantamount to an accusation of cheating. [Whether the allegation was well-founded in any individual case was not the central issue here]. Uncharacteristically, there was no direct reply from FIDE but three weeks later - and I'll leave everyone to decide whether this was coincidence - Lichess changed its published wording and has since referred instead to a 'violation' of its terms.

However, that was the limit to what I could achieve single-handedly. Further action would have required more widespread support from players and, in that regard, it quickly became clear that the necessary critical mass did not exist. Maybe it says something about the British public generally, or maybe it's specific to chess players, but there's a widespread tendency to moan [for example, on this forum] but do absolutely nothing.

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JustinHorton
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by JustinHorton » Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:03 pm

Back to the question raised above of players deliberately losing strings of online games, for whatever reason. I played this game earlier, which didn't amuse me overmuch. I kept an eye on my opponent and as I write these have been his eight most recent games. Oh, in between those, and my game, there was this one, where he did the same but his opponent resigned rather than have a timewaster spoil any of their day. So that's ten in a row.

Just to add to the general oddness, if his profile is to be believed he's an International Master.
"Do you play chess?"
"Yes, but I prefer a game with a better chance of cheating."

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Wadih Khoury
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Wadih Khoury » Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:10 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:03 pm


Just to add to the general oddness, if his profile is to be believed he's an International Master.
If you believe his profile, that would be him: https://ratings.fide.com/profile/14104539

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:41 pm

Rather low ratings if so, especially for somebody only recently turned 60.
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JustinHorton
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by JustinHorton » Thu Jun 03, 2021 2:08 pm

Wadih Khoury wrote:
Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:10 pm
JustinHorton wrote:
Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:03 pm


Just to add to the general oddness, if his profile is to be believed he's an International Master.
If you believe his profile, that would be him: https://ratings.fide.com/profile/14104539
Did you click on the link you quoted
"Do you play chess?"
"Yes, but I prefer a game with a better chance of cheating."

lostontime.blogspot.com

Wadih Khoury
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Wadih Khoury » Thu Jun 03, 2021 2:10 pm

Obviously not :lol:
Didn't even notice there was a link.

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