Two ways of cheating at chess
Monday, April 13, 2015
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A disgraced chess Grandmaster faces a 15-year ban from the game after being caught pretending to be desperate for the loo so he could use a mobile phone to cheat.
Georgian champion Gaioz Nigalidze was expelled from the Dubai Open on Saturday after his opponent Tigran Petrosian, became suspicious about the amount of times he nipped to the lavatory.
A complaint followed and Nigalidze was challenged. Tournament organisers then found Nigalidze had stored a mobile phone in a cubicle, behind the pan and covered in toilet paper.
The device was found to be logged into Nigalidze's social networking account and had one of his games being analysed by a smartphone chess app.In my playing days the possibilities of cheating did not extend far beyond a sly trip to the tournament bookstall if your opponent had played an unfamiliar opening.
But the advent of information technology has turned it into a real problem. When I went to watch the Candidates tournament in London a couple of years ago, I had to check in my mobile phone and subject to being passed over by a wand before I could enter the playing hall.
There are more esoteric ways of cheating in chess.
On Saturday Wesley So, who is fast emerging as one of the best players in the world, forfeited a game in the US Championship for "words of general encouragement and advice" (as the arbiter put it) to himself on a piece of paper below his score sheet.
It sounds harsh, but So had twice been warned about this earlier in the tournament. I guess the authorities were worried that players might start writing out their analysis of the position rather than just the moves of the game.
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