Note: I wrote this paper while taking the "Social Media and the Law" class at the University of Dayton School of Law during the summer of 2015. This paper has never been published, but the issues raised in this paper are, if anything, even more relevant today than they were in 2015, so I decided to post the complete paper here exactly as I originally wrote it.
INTRODUCTION: THE GAME OF KINGS, PLAYED BY KINGS
Chess cheating has become a major issue in the past decade or so due to a combination of three factors: increased chess computing power, miniaturization of chess computing devices/cell phones, and increased prizes at chess tournaments. Chess cheaters now have the means to easily conceal devices that can give them a huge, unfair competitive advantage, and they have the financial motive to use those devices.1 This paper will examine how chess computers and social media are employed by chess cheaters, and the legal remedies that can be employed to prevent, detect and punish chess cheaters.
First, though, it is important to take a brief look at how the game of chess has evolved and how chess tournaments function. This will make it easier to understand the challenges associated with preventing, detecting, and punishing chess cheaters.
Historian Richard Eales notes that chess was most likely invented in northern India in the sixth century CE.2 The first European references to chess predate 1000 CE.3 After chess reached Europe, the game evolved as a result of a series of rules changes primarily designed to “speed up the game.”4 By 1550, the new, modernized form of chess prevailed throughout most of Europe.5
Chess is a difficult game to master but it is an easy game to learn. The basic instructions about how to play, summarized in this paragraph and the following paragraph, can be grasped quickly by even a very young child and take up fewer than five pages in the U.S. Chess Federation (USCF) rule book.6 Chess is played on a 64 square board of alternating light and dark squares, with the board positioned so that a light colored square is always placed by each player’s right hand (a distinction that is often disregarded in mainstream media depictions of a chess board). The goal is to checkmate the opposing King, which means placing that King under an attack from which the King cannot escape. The King is the most important piece but also the most vulnerable. The Queen is the most powerful piece, as she can move any number of unoccupied squares up, down, to the right, to the left or on a diagonal (but only in one direction on a given turn). The Rook moves like the Queen except that it cannot operate on diagonals. A Bishop operates only on diagonals that are the same color as its original home square.
The quirky Knight is the only piece that moves in two directions on a single turn and the only piece that can hop over another piece in its path; its move encompasses an “L”-shape, covering two squares vertically and one square horizontally or two squares horizontally and one square vertically. The lowly Pawn marches straight ahead one square at a time, except on its very first move of the game when it has an option of marching forward one square or two squares. However, the Pawn is the only unit that captures differently than it normally moves; it cannot capture an enemy unit in its normal path but it can capture an enemy unit one diagonal in front to the right or left. A Pawn that moves two squares on its first move to pass an enemy pawn and avoid being captured can be captured “en passant” (in passing) by that enemy pawn but only if the opposing player avails himself of that option on his very next move. A Pawn that reaches the eighth rank can and must be promoted to any piece except a King.
In Europe, this game of battling kings was often played by kings and members of the aristocracy.7 King Philip II of Spain and King Sebastian of Portugal are just two of the many medieval rulers who played and sponsored chess.8 “The tradition of the itinerant chessmaster, touring with his chessmen from court to court like some medieval minstrel, continued well into the seventeenth century,” explains author and International Master William Hartston.9THE DEVELOPMENT OF TOURNAMENT CHESS
Chess was originally played without any kind of timing device or clock. In a game without a clock, the player with the losing position could stall.10 An 1843 game between Howard Staunton and Pierre St. Amant lasted over 14 hours. According to chess historian Bill Wall, “These kinds of purposeless prolongations and deliberate attempts to fatigue and wear out the opponent were commonplace at the time, and an average game lasted nine hours.”11 The development and use of the chess clock in the mid-1800s made it feasible to hold international tournaments pitting the strongest players in the world against each other.
Sometimes it was necessary to “adjourn” a timed game. When this happened, the player on move wrote down his intended move, stopped his clock and “sealed” his written move in an envelope that the tournament director kept until the game could be resumed. When the game was resumed, the tournament director opened the envelope in the presence of both players and the sealing player was required to play the move that he had written down. In theory, the players were not allowed to analyze the paused game prior to resumption but in practice this restriction was difficult to enforce and it became standard practice for each player to analyze the game with other players.12 The success of the former Soviet Union’s chess players in international competition stemmed in part from their teamwork in such situations.13
Since a tournament chess player is not allowed to consult with other parties or with any written material during a game, the adjournment process seems like it permits or even encourages players to violate the rules. USCF Life Master Mike Petersen describes why this was acceptable in a bygone era even in FIDE (an acronym for Federation Internationale des Echecs, which means World Chess Federation) events:The net effect was that the player who sealed the move knew his next move, but not what his opponent will play against it. The player who did not seal the move has to wait until the next day to find out his opponent’s next move. Both players were therefore in the same situation. It was a fair as you could get. There was only one problem. How did they prevent someone from analyzing the game during the adjournment period? Well, they didn’t. All Grandmasters at FIDE tournaments had at least one other ranked player with them whose job it was to analyze the adjourned positions and go over them with the player. But that’s cheating, you might say. Yes, today it would be considered that, but not back then. There were no reliable chess engines to analyze the game to death, so a GM’s “second” was a very valuable commodity. Today we look upon this practice as weird, but it was necessary back then.14
As Petersen indicated, the development of powerful chess computers made it necessary for all tournament games to end in one playing session without adjournment, because otherwise the players could enter the adjourned position into a computer and possibly obtain a definitive answer about how to proceed.
THE SILICON MONSTER CHANGES THE GAMEIn retrospect, the creation of computers that play chess at a Grandmaster level may seem inevitable but as recently as 40 years ago many experts in the field thought that chess is so complex that no computer could ever be programmed to beat the best human chess players. The number of possible legal chess positions is 1040 and the number of possible chess games is 10120, which is 10 followed by 120 zeroes.15 Such numbers are literally astronomical: the number of possible chess games exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.16
In 1968, reigning Scottish chess champion David Levy bet 500 British pounds (half of his annual income at the time) that no chess computer would be able to beat him in a match by August 1978.17 By 1971, Levy had become an International Master (the highest title in chess other than Grandmaster), the best chess computers had hardly improved at all and Levy increased his wager to 1250 British pounds.18 Until 1977, no computer program was strong enough to even mount a worthy challenge to Levy but that year Levy faced two different programs and won matches against both of them without suffering a single draw or loss.19 In 1978, Levy defeated a third computer before facing his fourth and final challenge, a six game match against a program called CHESS 4.720 CHESS 4.7 held Levy to a draw in the first game, marking the first time that a computer drew with an International Master under tournament conditions. Levy won the next two games and, needing only a draw win the bet, he decided to have some fun with an experimental opening. CHESS 4.7 won that game and then Levy returned to a safe and solid strategy, winning game five and his bet.21 Levy then made another bet, this time for $1000, that no computer would beat him by the end of 1983, and the editors of Omni magazine put up an additional $4000 on Levy’s behalf.22 Levy won that bet as well and he then renewed that bet, eventually losing in 1989.23
By that time, computers could beat Grandmasters but still could not quite take the measure of World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov. In 1989, Kasparov scored 2-0 in a match against Deep Thought, a computer that could process 750,000 chess positions per second. Deep Thought was programmed to not concede until its opponent had a huge advantage and after the match Kasparov commented, "I think the computer needs to be taught something – how to resign!"24
In 1996, Kasparov played Deep Blue—the successor program to Deep Thought—and won 4-2, but in the 1997 rematch a new, more powerful Deep Blue beat Kasparov 3.5-2.5.25 Kasparov insisted that Deep Blue’s programmers cheated by providing some in-game assistance to Deep Blue.26 Whether or not Kasparov’s allegation was true, the point is that as recently as 1997 it still seemed incredible that a chess computer could play in an apparently creative style (as opposed to relying on brute calculation) and beat the reigning World Champion. Now, the paradigm has shifted and no one would think that a computer would need a human’s help during a chess game but there is a growing concern about humans covertly using computers to cheat at tournament chess.
In 2005, Michael Adams, the seventh ranked Grandmaster in the world at the time, lost 5.5-0.5 to a computer program called Hydra.27 The most powerful chess computers are challenging for even the strongest human players to face not only because of their raw calculation speed but also because a computer plays at the same level all of the time and is not affected by fatigue, stress, hunger and other factors that cause variability in a human’s performance. There is little interest in sponsoring human versus computer chess matches now because, in order for even the strongest human chess players to have a chance, the match would have to be short in duration and allow sufficient rest between each game or else the computers would have to give substantial odds in material and/or time on the clock.28
IS THAT A GRANDMASTER IN YOUR POCKET?You could not sneak a desktop with Deep Blue into a chess tournament undetected but within the past decade or so chess computing software has been miniaturized to the extent that it can be used on a cell phone. In 2005, the program HIARCS Palm Chess Pro 13.1 defeated a Grandmaster in a match.29 Now, a person with the right equipment could show up at a chess tournament and receive undetected Grandmaster level advice at any point during a game.
One of the earliest instances of alleged chess cheating using chess computers and a cell phone happened at the 2005 HB Global Chess Challenge in Minneapolis, a tournament that featured a record-setting $500,000 prize fund.30 The tournament was divided into various sections, with prizes distributed to the highest scoring players in different rating classes, and in the last round a player who was competing for one of the rating class prizes was kicked out of the tournament after being caught speaking on his cell phone during his game.31 The tournament organizers suspected that this player was receiving moves from an accomplice in the building who was entering the game into a computer but they did not have to prove this to disqualify the player because the tournament’s rules explicitly prohibited any cell phone use for any reason during a game.32 The player’s games were not rated and a formal ethics complaint was filed against him with the USCF—but then this player showed up a few weeks later at the 2005 World Open, which offers the biggest annual prize fund in U.S. chess, and he tied for first place in his rating class, winning $5,833.33 World Open tournament director Bill Goichberg did not know that this player had been kicked out of the HB Global Chess Challenge for violating the anti-cheating rules but when Goichberg found out during the middle of the World Open he sought to disqualify the player.34 However, Goichberg could not prove that the player was cheating during the World Open and when the player threatened to take legal action if he was kicked out Goichberg backed down and let him stay in the tournament.35
These two different outcomes with the same player show the importance of tournament directors enacting strict anti-cheating rules prior to the start of an event and to the importance of tournament directors communicating with each other to keep track of cheaters and alleged cheaters; if Goichberg had known that this player had been kicked out of an event for cheating then Goichberg would likely have denied him entry into the World Open but once Goichberg accepted the player’s entry fee he could not kick the player out without proving that the player had cheated in the World Open specifically. As we will see, it can be difficult to prove that a player is cheating, which is why a rule prohibiting any cell phone use during a tournament is good, because such a rule automatically disqualifies a player who uses a cell phone without forcing the director to investigate the nature of the phone call; such an investigation could open up a host of legal issues, including right to privacy and right to avoid illegal search and seizure. It is much better for an organizer to set up anti-cheating rules in advance and make sure that the players know about and agree to abide by those rules than to permit players to enter an event and then try to determine on an ad hoc basis during the tournament who may be cheating.
Two separate instances of alleged cheating happened at the 2006 World Open. After that tournament, Goichberg, whose Continental Chess Association runs the World Open and many other large U.S. chess tournaments, spoke about how much technology had changed the chess tournament scene: “Before, a player might have discussed the position with someone who is a Grandmaster. That sounds terrible, but if the Grandmaster hasn’t seen your position, I don’t know if that is going to be much help. What is happening now is that the cheaters are concealing the fact that the moves are being transmitted to a computer.”36
Goichberg added that even though the new methods of electronic cheating are harder to detect than just observing a player speaking with a Grandmaster while his game is still in progress, there are some signs that indicate when a player is cheating, such as a player making sequences of moves that differ from typical human play, a player going through an entire game without making any mistakes and a player quickly showing significant improvement in his results, which is very unusual among adult players.37
Goichberg suspected that a player named Eugene Varshavsky was cheating at the 2006 World Open because Varshavsky fit the above profile.38 Varshavsky, who was rated slightly below Master level, beat three strong Masters and held another to a draw in the first four rounds of the event. He then lost to a Grandmaster but bounced back to beat Ilya Smirin, the Grandmaster with the highest USCF rating at that time.39 Goichberg asked Varshavsky to speak with him before the next round of the tournament but Varshavsky ducked into a bathroom and stayed there for 10 minutes. Goichberg waited for him to emerge and then received permission from Varshavsky to search him. No device or transmitter was found on Varshavsky, who during his games never removed a hat that fit tightly on his head.40 During the next round, Goichberg attempted to search the bathroom stall that Varshavsky had used but it remained occupied for 45 minutes by none other than Varshavsky. After Varshavsky finally left the stall, no incriminating evidence was discovered.41 Varshavsky lost his final two games of the event and did not qualify for a prize. The USCF did not rate Varshavsky’s suspicious games and eventually banned him from competing in USCF sanctioned events.42 Three years later, Varshavsky finished third in the National Sudoku Championship before being disqualified for cheating.43
The Varshavsky incident at the 2006 World Open raises several questions about preventing, detecting, and punishing chess cheating. In 2006, most chess tournaments did not have formal policies about computer-assisted cheating and tournament directors had to respond on the fly to suspicious situations, much like judges have to figure out how to apply old laws to new legal questions that arise as a result of the proliferation of social media networks. Goichberg never proved that Varshavsky was cheating and Varshavsky never admitted to cheating, but Varshavsky did not object to being searched at the tournament site and has not sought to be reinstated by the USCF—but what if Varshavsky had refused to be searched or had sued the USCF for banning him? How can a tournament director prove that a player is cheating if the tournament director does not catch the player in the act and how can the USCF ban a player without proof that the player cheated? Varshavsky did not openly use a cell phone or any other prohibited device, so he could not have been disqualified on those grounds even if the tournament had rules against such conduct.
Dr. Ken Regan, a Computer Science Professor at the University of Buffalo and an International Master, subsequently examined Varshavsky’s game versus Smirin and concluded that the results of his investigation “indicate a consistent narrative of cheating during the entire game.”44 Dr. Regan criticized the tendency of some people in “the chess world” to analyze the games of alleged chess cheaters “with no provision of data, methodology, logs, reports, anything to permit reproducibility of tests by others...These scientific fundamentals are overlooked amid need for due process with persons directly named and reputations involved.”45 Dr. Regan declared that his research was an effort “to remedy these lacks---you can dispute my methods but at least they're reviewable!”46 Dr. Regan concluded, “ [1] If someone cheats with more than one program, these methods can still detect cheating; and [2] Results alleging cheating with a specific program can be told apart from other programs (and possibly from versions of the same program). And both determinations can be made to accepted court standards of evidentiary statistics.”47
The latter point is critically important, because it provides a resource for tournament directors to use to both justify kicking a player out of a tournament and also to support such a decision if the expelled player decides to file a lawsuit in response to being disqualified. It is not at all farfetched to imagine a scenario in which a tournament director disqualifies a player for cheating based on the kind of analysis that Dr. Regan performs, whereupon that player sues (perhaps on a legal theory of recovering damages based on the prize that he could have won had he not been disqualified) and the court admits into evidence the kind of analysis that Dr. Regan performs because that analysis is valid expert testimony.
Nevertheless, Dr. Regan does not believe that his methods alone are enough to justify banning a player without some “physical or eyewitness evidence,” because Littlewood’s Law suggests that if a person plays 100 games “chances are at least one of them will match a given engine in a way that in isolation would be deemed to have a less than 1-in-a-thousand chance of happening without collusion. Hence other factors that in court cases go under the headings of ‘motive’ and ‘probable cause’ must be brought into play.”48
The second alleged chess cheating incident at the 2006 World Open involved a player named Steve Rosenberg who, unlike Varshavsky, was not playing in the tournament’s top section. Rosenberg was leading his section heading into the last round and one more win would have netted him a prize of about $18,000. Shortly after Rosenberg began playing his final game, several players reported hearing “whirring” noises emanating from a bathroom stall occupied by Rosenberg.49 Assistant tournament director Michael Atkins investigated these complaints, did not find any evidence of wrongdoing and instructed Rosenberg to not leave the playing area without being accompanied by a tournament director. Atkins also asked about a device in Rosenberg’s ear and Rosenberg said that it was a hearing aid.50 Oddly, Rosenberg was wearing large headphones over the alleged hearing aid but when Rosenberg’s opponent complained about the headphones Rosenberg complied with Atkins’ request to not wear the headphones (the tournament rules stipulated that a player could only wear headphones during a game if his opponent did not object).51
After several hours passed and after the lodging of several more complaints about Rosenberg, Atkins asked Rosenberg to remove the alleged hearing aid from his ear. Rosenberg put it in his pocket but Atkins insisted on examining the device.52 Atkins wrote down the device’s name and the name of a website that sold it. Subsequent investigation demonstrated that the device was not a hearing aid but that it was a “Phonito,” a wireless miniature communication receiver typically used with a signal booster worn around the neck.53 Atkins brought Rosenberg to the tournament director’s office, whereupon Rosenberg insisted that the device was a hearing aid but offered no explanation why he would seek to amplify sound with a hearing aid and then muffle sound with headphones.54 Rosenberg also refused to remove a bulky sweater that he had worn throughout the tournament and that could have been hiding a signal booster. Atkins then forfeited Rosenberg for cheating and Goichberg upheld that ruling. Rosenberg did not argue against the decision and merely asked to have the “Phonito” device returned to him.55
Rosenberg never contested his disqualification from the tournament or the USCF’s subsequent ban against him participating in their events. Atkins notes that Rosenberg went 18-0 in his three previous tournaments, an improbable score for a player at that rating level playing against other similarly rated players.56 If Rosenberg had contested the actions taken by Goichberg and/or the USCF, a strong evidentiary case could have been made against Rosenberg based on Rosenberg being caught with the “Phonito” device in his ear during the final round game, based on Dr. Regan-style computer analysis showing that Rosenberg’s games during the event matched up with computer moves to an unlikely degree and based on Rosenberg’s statistically improbable run of success prior to the World Open. The existence of that evidence, in addition to the available testimony of witnesses from the tournament about Rosenberg’s suspicious actions (including always wearing a heavy sweater indoors and consistently playing better right after making trips to the bathroom), probably explains why Rosenberg accepted his punishments without complaint.
As prizes are getting bigger, computers are getting stronger, and methods of communication are easier to conceal than ever before, it is becoming apparent that chess cheating is not limited to strong amateurs trying to make a quick financial score at one big tournament. Even Grandmasters have been caught cheating and the problem is so rampant that Grandmaster Nigel Short—the challenger for the 1993 World Chess Championship and still a top level performer—fears that smartphones will ruin chess as a competitive sport. Short says, “The basic problem is that it’s incredibly easy to cheat with a phone. You can have some application running on your phone, and it’s quite easy to conceal…My dog could win a major tournament using one of these devices. Or my grandmother. Anybody could do this.”57
One of the cases that particularly outraged Short happened in 2010 at the Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk when Grandmaster Sebastian Feller, a member of the French team, cheated his way to a 5000 Euro prize during the sport’s most prestigious team event.58 The elaborate scheme involved Feller, Grandmaster Arnaud Hauchard (the captain of the French team) and International Master Cyril Marzolo, and it took place not just during the Chess Olympiad but also during the 2010 Paris Open and the 2010 Bienne Open.59 During each of those tournaments, Marzolo followed Feller’s games live on the internet, entered the moves into a computer engine and then sent coded SMS messages containing the computer’s recommended moves to Hauchard, who was present in the playing area and used prearranged signals to communicate the recommended moves to Grandmaster Feller.60 The French Chess Federation suspended Feller, Hauchard and Marzolo, but the Court of Appeals of Versailles overturned those suspensions, ruling that even though Marzolo was not the owner of the cell phone used in the cheating operation he had been properly granted usage of it and was therefore entitled to privacy, preventing the French Chess Federation from using the SMS messages as evidence.61 The editors of Chessbase.com, perhaps the leading chess news and information site, were not pleased that the conspirators eluded justice based on a technicality:
We have the following proposal, which would clear up the entire cheating scandal quickly: the accused players, Marzolo, Feller and Hauchard should waive their formal confidentiality rights and simply publish the SMS messages sent during the Olympiad, and especially during the games. They are stored by the mobile phone service provider for one year (this is compulsory) and can be easily retrieved if permission is granted by the user of the phone. If there are any clearly personal messages unrelated to the affair these can be filtered out by a clerk or a trusted person.
If our proposal is rejected then the players must tell us (and the chess public) why. It is as if a crime has been committed, a person stands accused, there is video surveillance tape, but the accused refuses to allow it to be used as evidence since it compromises his privacy rights. The final clarification of a very damaging scandal that has been going on for far too long takes precedence over abstract privacy concerns.62
Subsequently, FIDE excluded Hauchard from participation in FIDE events for three years, Feller for two years, nine months and Marzolo for one year, six months (with the final nine months of the punishment suspended).63 The defendants argued that this was purely an internal French matter and that since a French court had already overturned the French Chess Federation’s sanctions FIDE had no standing to issue any punishments, but FIDE rejected that theory of the case (in the quoted text, FF refers to the French Chess Federation and EC refers to FIDE’s Ethics Committee, the body that reviewed the case and handed down FIDE’s punishments):
The case concerns facts allegedly committed by members of the French Team during the 2010 Olympiad (the most important FIDE competition) in Khanty-Mansiysk (Russia): it seems difficult to even imagine that this could be a “French internal affair,” a question of exclusive competence of the FF, even more considering that any decision of the FF would have no direct effect for what concerns FIDE and other chess federations and that the same FF for these reasons addressed a complaint to the EC.64
FIDE’s belated punishment of Feller, Hauchard and Marzolo hardly seems to have deterred other cheaters, and Short is disappointed that the French team’s tainted result was not expunged from the official records of the 2010 Olympiad.65 In the 2015 Dubai Open, a tournament featuring 70 Grandmasters competing for a top prize of $12,000, Grandmaster Gaioz Nigalidze--the 25 year old two-time national champion of Georgia--was caught cheating and disqualified from the event.66 Short declares, “The benefits of this guy cheating are clear,” noting that prior to being caught Nigalidze had just won $11,000 at a tournament in Abu Dhabi.67 Nigalidze was caught after he repeatedly went to the bathroom during his game versus Armenian Grandmaster Tigran Petrosian, always visiting the same stall even when the others were not occupied.68 Petrosian complained about his opponent’s suspicious actions and the tournament officials inspected the toilet stall, finding an iPhone wrapped in toilet paper and hidden behind the toilet.69 Nigalidze initially denied that he owned the iPhone but the officials determined that it was logged into a social networking site under Nigalidze’s account and that the game’s current position was being analyzed in a chess application.70
EASY TO ACCUSE, DIFFICULT TO PROVEIn both the Varshavsky and Rosenberg cases, no one found a “smoking gun” (such as a cell phone with a relevant chess position displayed, as in the Nigalidze case) to prove that cheating had happened, but based on the overwhelming circumstantial evidence a reasonable person could conclude that the tournament directors acted appropriately by disqualifying those players. However, the fact that a player can be disqualified based on circumstantial evidence without clear proof of how the player cheated also means that in some ways the burden of proof in these situations seems to rest with the accused and not the accuser(s). This raises the possibility that a player could be falsely accused of cheating by a well-meaning but overzealous person or, even more disturbingly, a player could be falsely accused of cheating by a party who stands to gain by getting that player disqualified.
In the 2015 European Women’s Chess Championship, a Romanian player named Mihaela Sandu was only ranked 45th out of 98 players but she won her first five games in the 11 round event.71 After seven rounds when Sandu was tied for first place with one other player, 32 participants in the event drafted a letter to the organizers stating, in part, that they have “grave concern regarding raising suspicion of cheating in the tournament” and proposing that the organizers impose a 15 minute delay in the live internet transmission of the tournament’s games.72 A second letter, signed by 15 players, singled out Sandu by name and requested specifically that her final four games not be transmitted live but only be published after completion.73 Tournament director Giorgia Giorgadze responded with a written statement in which she agreed to delaying the transmission of all games, denied that there is any reason to suspect cheating during this particular tournament and encouraged the players who signed the second letter “to show their respect to their colleague and to withdraw their signatures.”74 Giorgadze reminded those 15 players that FIDE rules state that a false accusation of cheating may be punishable by sanctions ranging from just a warning up to and including disqualification from the tournament.75 Computer analysis of Sandu’s games suggested that she was not receiving any outside assistance.76
No one offered proof that Sandu cheated or even an example of her acting suspiciously in any way. Sandu fired back at her accusers in an open letter, declaring, “I am writing this letter to file a complaint about their behaviour. What they did was a very dirty attack, permanently damaging my name in the chess world. Also want to mention (Natalia) Zhukova's paltry behaviour is standing out as she was the main benefactor of the defamation campaign, making psychological attacks right before our game.”77 Sandu won the games that were broadcast live and lost the games during which the transmission was delayed, which could be seen as evidence that she had cheated earlier in the tournament—but it is at least as plausible to suggest that the controversy affected her concentration and/or that after legitimately scoring a few upsets her performance regressed to the mean.78 After defeating Sandu, Zhukova won the event with 9.5/11, while Sandu finished with 6/11 and tied for 26th-44th place.79 In his final report about the event, Albert Silver--a strong player and veteran chess commentator--declared, “After taking exactly one game at random, the win over Olga Girya in round four, it is quite clear the players signing the letter made no effort whatsoever to examine the case before making the accusations.”80
Somewhere in between the Nigalidze case of a cheater caught redhanded and the Sandu case of a player being accused without any substantiating evidence is the curious Borislav Ivanov story. The Bulgarian player Ivanov burst onto the scene in late 2012 and early 2013 with a series of spectacular results far in excess of what would be expected based on his rating.81 At one tournament, Ivanov was strip searched but the search did not reveal any evidence of cheating.82 Ivanov produced great results followed by mediocre results, leading one strong player to speculate that part of Ivanov’s plan to avoid detection was to utilize at least three different playing styles: one style using the computer program Houdini set up to play for a win, one style using the computer program Houdini set up to play for a draw and a third style involving Ivanov playing on his own with no assistance.83 Dr. Regan determined that based on how often Ivanov’s moves matched the top choice of the computer engines during one of Ivanov’s successful tournaments the evidence could not be any stronger than Ivanov was cheating.84 After several Bulgarian players refused to play against Ivanov in April 2013 and Ivanov responded by publicly insulting those players, the Bulgarian Chess Federation (BCF) suspended Ivanov for four months—not for cheating but for making comments that bring dishonor to the sport.85 The BCF won a lawsuit that Ivanov filed to contest his suspension and the BCF also set up an anti-cheating test that Ivanov agreed to attend on June 19, 2013.86 However, at the last minute Ivanov decided to not show up, whereupon the BCF declared that when the suspension ended he would be permitted to play in Bulgarian tournaments “but the final decision on whether he can play will be made solely by the tournament organizers.”87 After several more incidents at various tournaments—including one occasion when Ivanov refused to take off his shoes and another when he fled a tournament after some sort of concealed device was discovered on his back—the Bulgarian Chess Federation banned Ivanov in December 2013.88 To this day, no one has conclusively proven that Ivanov cheated and/or how he avoided being caught, but his suspicious behavior during games (including making all of his moves in a very short period of time, regardless of the complexity of the position) and the high percentage of his moves that correlated with the top choices of computer engines make it seem likely that Ivanov cheated.
The documented instances of chess cheating demonstrate that this is a serious problem that must be addressed but the Sandu situation shows that false—or, at the very least, unsubstantiated—accusations also present a serious problem, one that in the long run can cause great damage to the sport in addition to harming the reputation of innocent competitors.
CONCLUSIONThe cliché “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” applies to the prevention, detection, and punishment of chess cheating in the digital age. There is no perfect solution to this problem but emphasis should be placed on trying to prevent cheating in the first place. In the wake of the two incidents at the 2006 World Open, Bill Goichberg instituted several anti-cheating rules, including banning headphones, earphones, cell phones and hearing aids, plus a provision that all participants agree that they can be disqualified if they refuse an official request to be searched for electronic devices.89 Goichberg presciently stated that the greatest threat was the combination of a chess engine and wireless communication to an accomplice outside of the playing area but noted that it would not be possible for organizers to use signal-jamming equipment due to a Federal Communications Commission rule that bans such use in the United States.90 Another good preventative measure is to delay internet broadcasting of moves to make it difficult for outsiders to analyze games in real time, an approach that is being adopted with increasing regularity by big international tournaments.
The second Millionaire Chess Open, scheduled to take place in Las Vegas from October 8-12, 2015, forbids any player from using or wearing electronic devices of any kind, including “phone, blackberry, PDA, computer, ear-piece, headset, communications device, microphone, speaker or the like while playing without the expressed written permission of a Tournament Director (doctors on call included).” Every player will be screened by security prior to entering the playing area and no player is allowed to leave the playing area while his game is in progress.91
Regarding detection, games with a large prize fund at stake should be subjected to computer analysis to determine if a player’s moves improbably line up with the computer’s top choices. As Dr. Regan notes, this is not dispositive evidence of cheating but--combined with eyewitness testimony and physical evidence--it can be used to make a case against a cheater.
Chess is an international game governed by a variety of national and local laws and a variety of international, national and local chess federations. Therefore, punishment of chess cheaters will not be uniform--and governments may have much less interest in pursuing such cases than chess federations do. The potential rewards of chess cheating are great in terms of money and prestige (such as championships won and titles gained), so the punishments must also be great. Grandmaster Short notes, “It’s almost impossible to police. So I think when a person gets caught in this way, there has to be really draconian punishment so that people think twice…if I were to take drugs--some sort of steroids or whatever--I will still never be able to win the 100 meters or the Tour de France, because I simply don’t have the physique for this. But any club player could win an international tournament if he’s using this sort of device.”92
In the wake of the Nigalidze incident, Short does not think that it is enough for just FIDE to punish chess cheaters. “I would like to see criminal charges for fraud, because this is what he did. If you use some sort of electronic device to break into an ATM and help yourself to cash, if you are discovered you will be prosecuted. This guy is defrauding other professionals, the other participants in the tournament.”93
At the 2006 New York Conference about Chess Cheating, Nelson Farber, a Manhattan-based attorney, said that legal authority exists to prosecute cheaters under either common law ("larceny by trick" in the New York State penal code) or civil racketeering (RICO) statutes.94 However, Farber noted that "prosecuting chess cheating is not likely to be a priority of District Attorneys and U.S. Attorneys” and he suggested that instead of seeking help from law enforcement chess organizations focus on policing chess cheating on their own.95 It is critically important for chess organizers to develop standardized anti-cheating measures, because this makes it less probable that their rulings would be second guessed by a court if a disqualified player files a lawsuit and because this makes it more probable that accused players receive a fair hearing.96 Farber’s specific suggestions included (1) gaining consent from players that the anti-cheating procedures are binding, (2) providing immunity for the tournament directors as decision makers in such matters, (3) instituting methods to protect privacy if personal searches are necessary and (4) the use of a “fair preponderance of the evidence” standard (the general standard applied in civil cases) when determining whether or not a player has cheated.97 Farber added that it should be included in tournament rules that a director’s decision about whether or not a player cheated is final and not subject to being overturned subsequently, at least in terms of changing who won a prize.98 Farber cited a 1991 New York case--Vaccaro v. Joyce, 154 Misc.2d 643 (N.Y. Misc. 1991)-- in which a horse-race bettor’s claim for damages due to a recording error was rejected because “There must be one final and determinative call, no matter what a subsequent review may show.”99 Farber noted that courts are hesitant to overrule a decision maker unless it can be proven that the decision was "arbitrary, capricious, or fraudulent."100 Farber added that a player who is disqualified from a tournament should have his case reviewed by the USCF Ethics Committee and Executive Board for possible further discipline and that this subsequent review should perhaps be conducted under the stricter clear and convincing evidence standard even though it would not be legally required to use that standard.101
If those procedures are followed and a player is found guilty, then what? Grandmaster Alex Stripunsky proposed a mandatory three year ban for a first offense and a lifetime ban for a second offense.102 I would take things even further. Someone who is caught in the act of cheating with physical evidence proving the cheating should be banned from tournament play for at least five years and should be forced to return any prizes won while cheating. Someone who is disqualified for cheating based on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence should be banned from tournament play for at least two years and should be forced to return any prizes won while cheating. Repeat offenders in either category should be banned for life. These rules should be incorporated into the bylaws of national chess federations and FIDE and bans issued by one such body should be enforced by all other such bodies.
Chess cheating is a serious problem that threatens the very future of the sport and strong measures are necessary to prevent, detect, and punish chess cheating so that the sport does not lose all credibility in the eyes of participants, fans and the general public.
Notes
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INTRODUCTION: THE GAME OF KINGS, PLAYED BY KINGS
1. Dylan Loeb McClain, Cheating Accusations in Mental Sports, Too, NEW YORK TIMES (August 8, 2006).
2. Richard Eales, CHESS: THE HISTORY OF A GAME, p. 35 (Facts on File Publications, 1985).
3. Id., p. 39.
4. Id., p. 72.
5. Id., p. 76.
6. U.S. CHESS FEDERATION’S OFFICIAL RULES OF CHESS, pp. 7, 17-21 (6th Edition, 2014).
7. William Hartston, THE KINGS OF CHESS, p. 12 (Pavilion Books Limited, 1985).
8. Id., p. 12.
9. Id., p. 14.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CHESS
10. Bill Wall, The Chess Clock—A History, http://www.chessmaniac.com/the-chess-clock-a-history/ (June 11, 2012).
11. Id.
12. Adjournment, http://www.chess.com/chessopedia/view/adjournment (March 10, 2008)
13. Olimpiu G. Urcan, Chess: A Singapore Scrapbook, http://sgchess.net/2012/11/08/adjournment-nostalgia/ (November 8, 2012).
14. Mike Petersen, Adjournments—An Outdated Practice, http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-open-file---adjournments-an-outdated-practice (July 9, 2010).
THE SILICON MONSTER CHANGES THE GAME
15. Garry Kasparov, The Chess Master and the Computer, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (February 11, 2010).
16. Id.
17. David Levy and Monty Newborn, HOW COMPUTERS PLAY CHESS, pp. 67-68 (W.H. Freeman and Company, 1991).
18. Id., p. 70.
19. Id., p. 89.
20. Id., pp. 92-93
21. Id., pp. 96-101
22. Id., p. 102.
23. Finlo Rohrer, The Unwinnable Game, BBC NEWS MAGAZINE, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25032298 (November 24, 2013).
24. Ram Prasad, Man vs. Machine—the endless fascination, http://en.chessbase.com/post/man-vs-machine-the-endle-fascination (November 9, 2003).
25. Id.
26. Rudy Chelminski, This Time It’s Personal,
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/9.10/chess.html (October 2001).
27. Adams vs. Hydra: Man 0.5-Machine 5.5,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/adams-vs-hydra-man-0-5-machine-5-5 (June 28, 2005).
28. Dylan Loeb McClain, Man vs. Computer Match Ends in Victory for…Man, but With a Catch, NEW YORK TIMES (October 1, 2008).
IS THAT A GRANDMASTER IN YOUR POCKET?
29. Palm Chess Hiarcs, http://www.hiarcs.com/palm_hiarcs.htm (page last modified on February 19, 2014).
30. Malcolm Pein, The $0.5 Million Chess Challenge, THE TELEGRAPH (April 4, 2005).
31. Blockade Chess Cheaters: USCF Petition, https://archive.is/uVzrG (November, 2005).
32. Id.
33. Id.
34. Id.
35. Id.
36. Dylan Loeb McClain, Cheating Accusations in Mental Sports, Too, NEW YORK TIMES (August 8, 2006).
37. Id.
38. Id.
39. Id.
40. Id.
41. Id.
42. U.S. Chess Federation Membership Suspensions,
http://archive.uschess.org/tds/suspension.html (updated August 19, 2008).
43. All About Sudoku, http://about-sudokus.blogspot.com/2009/11/eugene-varshavsky-disqualified-based-on.html (November 23, 2009).
44. Ken Regan, World Open Testing, http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess/fidelity/Varshavsky.html (May 24, 2007).
45. Id.
46. Id.
47. Id.
48. Id.
49. Cheating at the World Open—More Details,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/cheating-at-the-world-open-more-details (August 17, 2006).
50. Id.
51. Id.
52. Id.
53. Id.
54. Id.
55. Id.
56. Id.
57. Michael E. Miller, Chess Grandmaster Accused of Using iPhone to Cheat During International Tournament, WASHINGTON POST (April 14, 2015).
58. FIDE Confirms Sanctions in French Chess Cheating Case,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/fide-confirms-sanctions-in-french-cheating-case (July 30, 2012).
59. Id.
60. Id.
61. Judgment Rendered by the FIDE Ethics Commission Case N. 2/2011, p. 7 (July 1, 2012).
62. Feller’s Interview and a Solution to the Cheating Scandal,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/feller-s-interview-and-a-solution-to-the-cheating-scandal (August 23, 2011).
63. Judgment Rendered by the FIDE Ethics Commission Case N. 2/2011, p. 24 (July 1, 2012).
64. Id., p. 9.
65. Michael E. Miller, Chess Grandmaster Accused of Using iPhone to Cheat During International Tournament, WASHINGTON POST (April 14, 2015).
66. Id.
67. Id.
68. Id.
69. Id.
70. Id.
EASY TO ACCUSE, DIFFICULT TO PROVE
71. Frederic Friedel, Suspicion at the European Women’s Championship,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/suspicion-at-the-european-women-s-championship (May 29, 2015).
72. Id.
73. Id.
74. Id.
75. Id.
76. Id.
77. Support for Mihaela Sandu,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/support-for-mihaela-sandu (May 30, 2015).
78. Id.
79. European Women CC Won by Zhukova,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/european-women-cc-is-won-by-natalia-zhukova (June 1, 2015).
80. Id.
81. Alex Karaivanov, A Game of Chicken: Ivanov Rides Again,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/a-game-of-chicken-ivanov-rides-again-230313 (March 23, 2013).
82. Id.
83. Id.
84. Alex Karaivanov, Experts Weigh in on Ivanov’s Performance,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/experts-weigh-in-on-ivanovs-performance-060613 (June 5, 2013).
85. Alex Karaivanov, The Show Goes on: Ivanov in Kustendil,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/the-show-goes-on-ivanov-in-kustendil-160613 (June 3, 2013).
86. Alex Karaivanov, Ivanov Misses BCF Anti-Cheating Test,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/ivanov-mies-bcf-anti-cheating-test-120713 (July 11, 2013).
87. Id.
88. Peter Doggers, Ivanov Again Suspended by Bulgarian Chess Federation,
http://www.chess.com/news/ivanov-again-suspended-by-bulgarian-chess-federation-2458 (December 22, 2013).
CONCLUSION
89. Minutes of the Chess Cheating Conference in New York,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/minutes-of-the-che-cheating-conference-in-new-york (January 11, 2007).
90. Id.
91. Millionaire Chess Tournament Policies, https://millionairechess.com/tournament-policies.
92. Michael E. Miller, Chess Grandmaster Accused of Using iPhone to Cheat During International Tournament, WASHINGTON POST (April 14, 2015).
93. Id.
94. Minutes of the Chess Cheating Conference in New York,
http://en.chessbase.com/post/minutes-of-the-che-cheating-conference-in-new-york (January 11, 2007).
95. Id.
96. Id.
97. Id.
98. Id.
99. Id.
100. Id.
101. Id.
102. Id.
