Chess Grandmaster Caught Cheating in Tournament With Hidden Cellphone in Bathroom (bleacherreport.com) 97
"The World Chess Federation (FIDE) announced Saturday that it caught chess grandmaster Igors Rausis cheating during a tournament in France," writes Bleacher Report.
According to ESPN.com, the FIDE noted that Rausis was "caught red-handed using his phone during a game." A cellphone was found in a toilet that Rausis had used during the competition, and Rausis later admitted to using it to cheat.
Per Chess.com, Rausis said the following regarding the scandal: "I simply lost my mind yesterday. I confirmed the fact of using my phone during the game by written [statement]. What could I say more? ... At least what I committed yesterday is a good lesson, not for me -- I played my last game of chess already...."
The 58-year-old Rausis was born in the Soviet Union and currently represents the Czech Republic after previously representing Latvia and Bangladesh. Rausis became a grandmaster in 1992, and he is the No. 53 ranked chess player in the world, according to the FIDE.
It's not the first time this has happened. A Georgian national chess champion was also found to be cheating with an iPhone hidden in a toilet stall more than four years ago. But in this case, "The 58-year-old Latvian-Czech grandmaster had raised suspicions after he increased his rating in recent years to almost 2700," reports Chess.com.
The director-general of the FIDE said they've now reported Rausis to the French police, and that they'd been suspicious of him for a long time. "It is impossible to completely eliminate the cheating, but the risk of being caught has increased significantly, and the penalties will become much more significant."
Per Chess.com, Rausis said the following regarding the scandal: "I simply lost my mind yesterday. I confirmed the fact of using my phone during the game by written [statement]. What could I say more? ... At least what I committed yesterday is a good lesson, not for me -- I played my last game of chess already...."
The 58-year-old Rausis was born in the Soviet Union and currently represents the Czech Republic after previously representing Latvia and Bangladesh. Rausis became a grandmaster in 1992, and he is the No. 53 ranked chess player in the world, according to the FIDE.
It's not the first time this has happened. A Georgian national chess champion was also found to be cheating with an iPhone hidden in a toilet stall more than four years ago. But in this case, "The 58-year-old Latvian-Czech grandmaster had raised suspicions after he increased his rating in recent years to almost 2700," reports Chess.com.
The director-general of the FIDE said they've now reported Rausis to the French police, and that they'd been suspicious of him for a long time. "It is impossible to completely eliminate the cheating, but the risk of being caught has increased significantly, and the penalties will become much more significant."
There are only a couple of good chess engines (Score:1)
Re: There are only a couple of good chess engines (Score:5, Informative)
Are those engines available to anyone?
Yes. Stockfish [stockfishchess.org] is one of the best, if not THE best chess engine. Anyone can download it.
I thought the best required special hardware.
Deep Blue required special hardware in 1996. Today, your cellphone can run Stockfish and totally crush any human grandmaster.
Re: There are only a couple of good chess engines (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: There are only a couple of good chess engines (Score:5, Funny)
No that just means that future grandmasters will be stripped, X-Rayed, will have to play in the nude, and piss in a bottle. Will probably affect TV rates. Oh wait, no it won't.
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Serious tournaments have been using metal detectors for a while now. They won't let you in with smart devices. Also, people do all kinds of move analysis afterwards. This guy was caught because they already had an eye on him, from his suspiciously good moves compared to his former play.
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They can be caught statistically. Here's a Q&A [youtube.com] of chess.com's anti-cheating efforts.
Re: There are only a couple of good chess engines (Score:4, Informative)
Stricter testing at the 1984 Olympics is the likely reason the Soviet block countries boycotted.
File under garbage.
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan around the end of 1978 / start of 1979. A large number of countries from "The West" then boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980.
4 years later the games were in the US and Ronald Reagan was president, of course the Soviets and their allies were going to find a reason to boycott.
As for your steps to avoid cheating in Chess, similar measures have been in place for a few years now. A Bulgarian called Borislav Ivanov was clearly cheating - it was obvious from his play - 5-6 years ago but all the measures in place failed to discover how. GMs were withdrawing from tournaments if he was going to be present. Then the officials wanted to look at his thick-soled shoes one day. He refused. He was told he would be ejected unless he allowed them to look at the shoes. He left and was subsequently banned.
He was subsequently convicted of some unrelated fraud involving - I think - real-estate.
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I think it means that chess tournaments are pointless now. It's pretty much impossible to catch someone using something like chess engine installed on a smartwatch or an android TV or even (eventually) electronics directly implanted in their body.
You're not allowed to bring a smart watch into the tournament hall. You're definitely not allowed to bring a smart TV.
Body implants are harder to detect, sure. But not impossible. Also, not easy to implant long-term without complications.
Re: There are only a couple of good chess engines (Score:4, Informative)
Stockfish is the best on CPU hardware (including smart phones), but it lost the most recent TCEC competition against Leela Chess Zero, an engine based on machine learning that requires a fast GPU to work well.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
But all these engines, whether easy for a user to sneak in (or get calls from a home machine) - are available online for use in analyzing games. Watch some of the chess channels on youtube, like John Bartholomew and you'll see the odd person cheating using an engine and doing things almost all humans would find crazy - simply because the engine can follow the lines further than any human and deal with crazy complexity. But in doing so, they tend to go for positions and mov
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Deep Blue required special hardware in 1996. Today, your cellphone can run Stockfish and totally crush any human grandmaster.
I'm only rated ~2000, so stockfish on a phone can beat me, sure.
Stockfish on a phone would not be likely to beat anybody in the top 20. You would need to run stockfish on a server to do that, and just use the phone as the user interface. You can do that using 90s software, of course.
Re: There are only a couple of good chess engines (Score:4, Informative)
Stockfish on a decent smartphone has a rating over 3300, so it will easily beat any top grandmaster.
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That's a trick number.
Weak CPUs have much lower ratings at the evaluation times relevant to computer cheating.
A phone has a hard time breaking 2700 at fast time controls.
But keep in mind, stockfish has no ELO rating against humans. When it says 3300 rating, that is its ELO against other computers. If you put it in a match against the world champion, it won't do 3300 performance rating, because most of the games will be drawn and you can't actually get a rating that high anyways.
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Not necessarily true - all top players prepare lines using computers.
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They are cheating at a commercial tournament, which in many countries amounts to fraud... For a similar reason, doping in sports is illegal an can you land in jail...
Re: Only in France (Score:1, Interesting)
Not for long. Men can take enough estrogen to feint being women and take as many titles as they want, this will lead to women doping to compete which will collapse the entire system and or allow regular men to dope
Decadence from here
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Yep, this is the real problem. Let's ignore the other high profile instances of doping and instead focus on a few trans athletes. Also disregard that this is nothing new and has been possible for decades...
They put spy cams in the bathroom? (Score:2)
Re:They put spy cams in the bathroom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: They put spy cams in the bathroom? (Score:2, Informative)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/07/12/chess-world-rocked-scandal-grandmaster-pictured-using-phone/
Re: (Score:2)
Should've flushed (Score:2)
A cellphone was found in a toilet that Rausis had used during the competition, and Rausis later admitted to using it to cheat.
Maybe it just didn't go down.
He was cheating in two ways (Score:5, Informative)
The ELO rating system awards / removes points based on the result and the strength of the opponent.
A defeat will always see you lose points, the number of points depends on the strength of the opponent.
A draw can gain you points if the opponent is higher-rated or lose them if the opponent is lower rated, the quantity depends on the rating difference.
A win will always gain you points, although if the difference exceeds 400 points then the opponent is assumed to be 400 points worse for rating purposes.
Rausis was gaming the system by only playing tournaments where every other player was rated way below him and then winning every game. Draws would have really hurt his strategy, defeats unthinkable. A number of other players frequently play lower-rated opponents to boost their own ratings but none as blatantly (and exclusively) as Rausis. A rule-change may be in the offing.
What had not even been hinted on publicly was that his close to 100% win rate against inferior opponents was due to silicon assistance, although there were apparently suspicions. Alexander Grishuk - a world class player from Russia - made a comment along the lines of how pleased he was to see the man having been caught.
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What you replied to didn't mention the "using an engine" part. That was the cheating. The other thing is just an annoyance.
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What part of "using silicon assistance" was ambiguous?
His gaming of the system by exploiting the 400-point loophole seems to have required silicon assistance to succeed.
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Rausis was gaming the system by only playing tournaments where every other player was rated way below him and then winning every game.
As long as you're not using an engine to suggest good moves, this isn't really "gaming" the system. A high ranked player is more likely to beat a much weaker player, but that expectation is built into the point adjustment algorithm. If you only perform as well as predicted, your average rating stays the same.
The way it worked out in his case is because it's not as noticeable when you beat weaker players using engine help. A win against a top player, using strong non-obvious moves, played right after a toile
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A high ranked player is more likely to beat a much weaker player, but that expectation is built into the point adjustment algorithm. If you only perform as well as predicted, your average rating stays the same.
That would be true except for the 400-point rule. If you beat a player rated more than 400 points below you, you get +0.8 rating points for that win. The reason for this is that top players play in team events / open tournaments where some of their opponents will be rated that much lower, top player
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Using the 400-point-rule to gain points is merely controversial, it isn't cheating. Making an accusation of cheating without sufficient cause is itself cheating!
If you were playing in a tournament with somebody eeking (real chess verb) points, and you said that he is cheating, you would be the one cheating.
People who dislike eeking, but who are not cheaters, don't call it cheating. They say they dislike the rule and want to change it. Very different.
he cheated us all (Score:2)
He raised the hopes of older folks that significantly improving at chess, or any mental activity, is still possible after age 50, that it doesn't have to be a game for the young who have the most mental stamina. (Of course, it seems now that chess is the computer's game, and the human world champion will never again be more than 2nd rate to them.)
It was also suspicious, but people wanted to believe in him and his inspiring improvement. Now to find out that those suspicions were justified is, how shall I
Re:he cheated us all (Score:4, Interesting)
Vasily Smyslov was a top player into his 60's, I think it was his eyesight which pretty much curtailed his playing career - he was pretty much blind. One of his greater later games was a 29 move effort v Karpov in the 39th USSR Championship, although Karpov was only 20 at the time.
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It was his last game not because of his character, which is demonstrably lacking, but rather that he won't be permitted to play and will be stripped of his title.
Why the police? (Score:2)
Re:Why the police? (Score:5, Insightful)
We can call the police when people cheat during a game?
If you are playing for real money, cheating is stealing.
Re: Why the police? (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody serious plays for real money.
FIDE tournaments have prize money. At the top level, the prizes are millions of euros/dollars.
Serious players play to play.
Serious players need to eat and pay rent.
So what you are saying is... (Score:2)
Nobody serious plays for real money.
FIDE tournaments have prize money. At the top level, the prizes are millions of euros/dollars.
Serious players play to play.
Serious players need to eat and pay rent.
They need that check, mate.
Thank you. I'll be here all week, tip your servers.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Odd then, that nobody arrested Lance Armstrong then, since he clearly cheated in the tour de france, which DOES play for money. There's a HUGE history of cheating in horse racing, and I've never heard the cops being called in. Basically all sports have tons and tons of cheating in them. The only person I've ever heard being prosecuted in connection the cheating was Barry Bonds, and he was charged with obstruction of justice, NOT cheating. And yes, baseball is most certainly about playing for money, even
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Calling it "stealing" is blatantly false.
Calling it fraud is more accurate, legally.
Lance Armstrong reaches $5m settlement in $100m federal fraud case
https://www.theguardian.com/sp... [theguardian.com]
among many
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But calling it stealing is just as good.
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If there's something of value at stake then cheating is fraud and illegal everywhere.
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And illegal. The police not having the initiative or resources to pursue it doesn't change that.
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"represents" (Score:3)
"currently represents the Czech Republic after previously representing Latvia and Bangladesh."
What? That makes no sense. Why do chess players need to "represent" a country anyway?
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"currently represents the Czech Republic after previously representing Latvia and Bangladesh." What? That makes no sense. Why do chess players need to "represent" a country anyway?
Groupies?
Re:"represents" (Score:4, Informative)
The last word championship was between Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen. Fabiano began his career in America playing for the U.S. Chess Federation, but he has dual citizenship as an Italian American. For about 4 years he played for the Italians when living in Italy, but has since returned to America and plays for the U.S. Chess Federation again.
Most GM's need to be sponsored as they cant make a living playing chess. Fabiano Caruana no longer needs the sponsorship dollars (he made some good money playing the world championship), but more comes with it than dollars.
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Also, because players can compete in national championships if they are registered players for that country, or they can play for the national team in the Chess Olympiad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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...because they are sponsored by national chess federations.
The last word championship was between Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen. Fabiano began his career in America playing for the U.S. Chess Federation, but he has dual citizenship as an Italian American. For about 4 years he played for the Italians when living in Italy, but has since returned to America and plays for the U.S. Chess Federation again.
Mostly true, but Fabi never lived in Italy and doesn't speak Italian. He does have dual citizenship because his parents are both Italian. (He was born in Florida but spent his early years in NY) In his teens his family lived in Hungary. That's why he was playing for the Italian team; he qualified by citizenship, and he lived close enough in Hungary to travel for the events and for training. His accent is Hungarian. He continued to live there until he switched to the US team, which is when he moved to St. L
Re: (Score:2)
Anna Muzychuk is Ukranian but played for Croatia for a while, two young Ukranian stars (Sergey Karjakin and Kateryna Lahno) moved to the Russian federation a few years back.
Peter Leko is from Serbia, but he belongs to the Hungarian minority there and has played for Hungary pretty much all his career.
The Bulgarian federation was banned for a while (I think the ban is over) which led to various Bulgarians playing for other countries. Some still do.
Quite apart from Caruana, Wesley So (Philippines) and Leinier
Re:"represents" (Score:4, Informative)
So and Dominguez both moved to the US first, for other reasons, and then joined the US team. So they're not really good examples of players who represent a different country because that country will sponsor them.
None of the top players will be found in that category, because they make a lot of money from tournaments.
The US also pays less than most countries. It is not nationally supported to any significant degree like it is in most countries. There is not even any system in place to guarantee slots on the national team. The US Chess Federation is a non-profit charity with no connection to government.
Cellphone in Bathroom? (Score:2, Funny)
I can just imagine the person on the other end of the call, trying to figure out which chess position is called "Brrrraaaaaap!"
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He wasn't making a call to anyone, just consulting a chess app running on his phone.
A Russian caught cheating in a competition? (Score:4, Funny)
...and . hate when they post only hafl the story (Score:1)
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You can download chess app, like DroidFish, enter the game moves as you go along, and then let it calculate best variations.
We've already lost chess to PCs (Score:2)
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The money in most chess tournaments is usually not big enough to allow you to hire accomplices and set up elaborate cheats. And in order to get invited to big tournaments you need a high rating, which requires years of cheating in smaller tournaments, in all kinds of locations. Many of these smaller tournaments don't do live relay of the moves (especially not on lower boards), so your accomplice needs to be close enough to monitor the board, and then copy the moves in his phone, which is very suspicious.
Amazing battery life (Score:4, Funny)
"A Georgian national chess champion was also found to be cheating with an iPhone hidden in a toilet stall more than four years ago"
Four years; those iPhones do have amazing battery life don't they!
Okay (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
not that hard.. (Score:2)