News came on October 14th at 7:03 am from Chess24 Twitter account that Krill Shevchenko during the Spanish Team Chess Championship was alleged to have been caught waiting for a certain stall in a bathroom where it was found there was a phone with his suspected handwriting on to not touch.
Hi - further to this thread on cheating - did you listen to the C-squared podcast on November 4th? An interesting episode, interview with David Smerdon (an Australian Grandmaster) who ran an interesting and comprehensive experiment on OTB cheating. The section on David's experiment starts at about 22m https://c2pod.com/episodes/this-grandmaster-ran-the-worlds-largest-chess-cheating-experiment
A very interesting area, and you raise a lot of key questions as to - what do we mean by cheating, and how to deter people from doing it. The people at chess.com define cheating (or suspicious activity, in their parlance) as 'any move which is not your own'. This clearly outlaws the use of engines, but also one might argue, coaching and tutorials from other players. Chess.com use algorithms to detect 'non-human moves' and close the accounts of people who flout these rules. However, in practice - you get one warning but you're allowed to open another account. 2 strikes and you're out. But the consequences arent serious for the majority of players on chess.com,people aren't playing for money, mainly for rating points and certain league championships. But at a professional level, I think that the penalties should be severe. Consulting an engine over a critical move, even just one, can make the difference between victory and defeat, and result in winning (or losing) competitions, which bring money, status and crucially, invitations to further tournaments. Hans Niemann has been severely punished for cheating (when he was 12 years old) and perhaps his punishment and demonisation by chess.com and the St Louis chess club was overly harsh,however this action may have deterred others from also bending the rules. I believe that, as in other sports, there should be proper efforts made to ensure a level playing field for all.
Hi - further to this thread on cheating - did you listen to the C-squared podcast on November 4th? An interesting episode, interview with David Smerdon (an Australian Grandmaster) who ran an interesting and comprehensive experiment on OTB cheating. The section on David's experiment starts at about 22m https://c2pod.com/episodes/this-grandmaster-ran-the-worlds-largest-chess-cheating-experiment
Ooooo thanks for the link. I had not seen this yet.
A very interesting area, and you raise a lot of key questions as to - what do we mean by cheating, and how to deter people from doing it. The people at chess.com define cheating (or suspicious activity, in their parlance) as 'any move which is not your own'. This clearly outlaws the use of engines, but also one might argue, coaching and tutorials from other players. Chess.com use algorithms to detect 'non-human moves' and close the accounts of people who flout these rules. However, in practice - you get one warning but you're allowed to open another account. 2 strikes and you're out. But the consequences arent serious for the majority of players on chess.com,people aren't playing for money, mainly for rating points and certain league championships. But at a professional level, I think that the penalties should be severe. Consulting an engine over a critical move, even just one, can make the difference between victory and defeat, and result in winning (or losing) competitions, which bring money, status and crucially, invitations to further tournaments. Hans Niemann has been severely punished for cheating (when he was 12 years old) and perhaps his punishment and demonisation by chess.com and the St Louis chess club was overly harsh,however this action may have deterred others from also bending the rules. I believe that, as in other sports, there should be proper efforts made to ensure a level playing field for all.