Everyone complains about cheating in poker. The J4 Garrett/Robbi incident for example. But chess cheating is on a whole different level. It has gotten so bad that at major tournaments they are now scanning the players with Non Linear Junction Detectors. These devices detect any signals being sent from outside or inside to the players. They also manually search the players for any devices in special security rooms before the players can continue to the playing area. It has gotten completely crazy. And even more crazy, unlike poker, there is very little money in chess - it's mainly rating points they play for and a small amount of money. A single hand in a high stakes poker game is more than most chess pros make in 2-3 years.

Wesley so just again to magnus in toronto...

cheating in chess is bad, and for sure becoming a bigger problem over time, but don't know how you can determine that it's worse than poker much less on "a whole different level". preventive measures being taken at prestigious tournaments to prevent cheating are on a whole different level than poker, sure.

with chess you can replay games and determine what % of the time a player is making perfect engine moves. those perfect plays become much more difficult for humans to identify as the game progresses, and strongly indicate cheating when someone consistently finds eureka-level optimal moves in middle/end games that are not apparent to most other humans or even many grandmasters. iirc this was why Magnus insinuated Hans cheated and part of the damning evidence when people analyzed other games he played both online and OTB.

given the imperfect information inherent to poker, solvers can't tell you "this is the perfect move you can't lose this way". it's an optimal frequency of various plays. that means it's a lot harder to detect especially over small samples. there's also just a lot more variance in poker so hard to suss out whether people are suspiciously brilliant or getting lucky.

as you noted, there's little money in chess compared to poker, and i'd be shocked if the rate of cheating online isn't on par with (or worse than) chess. GTOW's fair play tool exposed a number of winning players as cheats with a little detective work from suspicious players (see projectbaby). easy counter for cheaters: use a solver other than GTOW.

another difference is if you covertly smuggle a solver into a live poker game it likely makes you +EV, but doesn't guarantee you tournament victory like a chess engine would, so the incentive is lower to deposit GTO vibrating beads inside of you because the benefit would be marginal compared to just studying/memorizing a bunch of solver spots. on the other hand, if you can cheat by knowing your opponents cards you can extract a lot more money from the game at will, and indeed we see that cropping up often: J4, Postle, the recent allegations RE: CA chinese home games. those are just the tip of the iceberg from people too obvious/stupid that are playing on live streams, and no doubt subtler forms are happening all the time.

tldr: chess cheating ≤ poker cheating

GothamChess did a video yesterday about being in chess.com's anti-cheating trial for Titled Tuesday, a weekly money event.

He had to join a special zoom call, show all of his screens, have a different webcam on than his streaming camera, keep task manager open on the screen to show that all potential cheating softwares were not running, etc.


It wouldn't be unreasonable for poker sites to implement something similar, at least for their high stakes games and high roller events where people are most incentivized to cheat.

ok Mr Kramnik

Cheating in chess is not better or worse, just different. Poker cheating gives you an edge, chess cheating is a win code (essentially imagine if instead of solvers giving you the GTO play, they turned on Russ Hamilton god mode).

The flip side is: there's less incentive to do it because of a combination of the factors:
1) If you aren't a top GM, you are going to immediately be under suspicion
2) If you are a top GM, you essentially risk your career
3) If you are cheating, it isn't that hard to prove circumstantially after the fact
4) The money involved in cheating in a (say) Titled Tuesday is nothing

well put.

RE #1-3: if chess cheats can implement judiciously (only in early/middle game), could they pass themselves off as someone who has done their homework studying openings 20-25 moves deep and win most games? or can elite players typically overcome any disadvantage to playing engines through that stage? i'm a relative chess amatuer so curious if this is off-base.

Magnus won again...

It sounds like they made Nihal pee in a cup and he's not happy about it.

Not really. The problem in chess when you try to cheat is you have a cards face up history of your previous play, and if you go from being a nice 2400 who plays decently to suddenly having a 20+ move command of theory and perfect tactics, it's kind of obvious and everyone is going to immediately suspect you and comb over everything until they either prove you cheated or just refuse to believe you didn't.

At a lower level (say like 1500ish or lower) you could probably do this just because in those games, there's often going to be a two or three move combo that leads to decisive advantage that you can then win even playing suboptimally. At the higher level, your 3000+ play might get you the edge of a better position, but it's still going to be hard to convert.

What you describe is basically Hans Niemann exactly. 2500 GM, suddenly took a big leap, and Carlsen with no proof basically just say "he's a cheater and I'm not playing him, full stop."

Fwiw, I never believed for one second that Hans cheated vs. Magnus. Magnus had a bad game and Hans didn't even play "that well" but "well enough" to beat him.