There was a case where a blind chess player was caught cheating and got banned
from playing, the first time for two years and the second time for life.
But in the beginning, there was a lot of media coverage regarding his results,
and I thought it was exciting, but then I had a look at some of his matches
and I was like, wow. - What did you notice?
What you see are inhuman decisions and inhuman precision. It's easy to notice
And then, there are surprisingly many, even chess players, not necessarily in
the circles that I travel, or among the best ones, but people defended him a lot.
There was a lot of local support. And yes, it was a really nice story.
People called it a witch-hunt, and blamed it on jealousy towards him. Saying that
they refused to believe the experts, which makes me think - How often do you see such
a thing? Well, one just doesn't want to believe what the experts are saying,
we still like to believe good stories. But in this case people really let themselves
be fooled to a high degree, and refused to listen to experts saying this is not right
This does not make sense at all.
How often is it that we are fed pure nonsense.
How does it feel when you see the move? Is it a move that does not make sense
to you in the moment? - Yes, it doesn't follow a logic
that confirms to the other moves made by the same person. Which is how a strong
chess player would think. It's more like, you got a right answer, and you just
pulled that answer out of the air. You are not able to see the process behind,
and that's when you think there is something fishy going on.
Of course you need more examples to prove it, and in this case the player was invited
to take a test organized by the Norwegian Chess Federation. And I supported there
being quite a large margin in that test. Had the conclusion been that his player
strength was on 16-1700, and his per- formance level on 2-3, or 2-4. Then
I would've said that, OK, his performance was unlikely, but it's still possible.
So he could've gotten the benefit of the doubt. But the actual conclusion
of the test was that he was almost unable to play.
I wonder what these people think! And there have been multiple cases of this?
Yes, and that's the problem with chess, the people who get caught are those
who cheat in a really obvious and stupid manner.
Everybody thinks that you need to insert some mistakes during the game.
Yes, but the problem was that he was not good enough to see what would've made sense
But, had I started cheating in a clever manner, I am convinced no one would notice
I would've just needed to cheat one or two times during the match, and I would not
even need to be given moves, just the answer on which move was way better.
Or, here there is a possibility of winning and here you need to be more careful.
That is all I would need in order to be almost invincible. Which does frighten me.
Especially in online chess, you have a lot of anti-cheating efforts, but at the end
of the day, the game doesn't work if you do not trust your opponents.
That, at the end of the day, there isn't enough to earn by cheating. If someone
catches you, your career is over. As chess is so unorganized, most events are based
on invites and the invites will be non-existent.
Don't you believe a lot of people want the taste of playing the big guys, and they've
got nothing to lose cheating. - Those are the dangerous ones.
Those who are good at playing, have tried their best but not reached the top.
They are the ones with the incentives. But there have been few of those online.
Mostly, it's been established players at the top and young players leveling up.
Which haven't had these incentives. But, yeah. There is definitely a challenge in
chess with all of these people with strong incentives to cheat. And, if it's done in
in a clever way, it's hard to notice.
I'm not going to sit here and spread rumors, but it would not surprise me
at all if we've had a lot of cheaters, even in big tournaments, that have won and not been caught.
But do you know that you have played someone who cheated?
I have played random people online where I notice that they cheat. But over the
board I have never suspected anyone. But, you would have to free yourself from it.
With such a suspicion, you would have a massive psychological disadvantage.
I remember from playing chess as a child, when the computer helped me with moves
I became completely depended on it as I had no plan moving forward.
So immediately after using the help function, I was completely lost.
So you get kind of addicted to it, and lose your style of playing to cheating
Yes, you can say it that way. And those who have helped me,
especially the older ones in my team, are no longer able to play chess.
Because they are so used to working with analysis and computers. So they are good
coming with ideas and use the computer for that purpose, but when playing they
end up needing help. They are used to being guided further by the computer.
That's kind of a parallel to addiction to social media and computers in other areas,
where we stop thinking for ourselves.
