After Priyanka Nutakki had won her sixth round game at the U20 World Championship, a routine search produced a bag of earbuds inside her jacket. Not only was the point awarded to the loser, who went on to win the event, Nutakki was also expelled from the competition, even though there was no hint of actual cheating.
The Indian grandmaster is just the latest victim of ever tougher anti-cheating rules in competitive chess. Thousands of players had forfeited games for forgetting to switch of their cellphone since those were banned in 2003. By comparison, only a few dozen cheaters have been caught in over-the-board chess. Earbuds could be used to receive help from an assistant. Any electronic device, even bringing a personal pencil is forbidden in major competitions today. The responsibility is all on the players.
“Trust is not really the question”, says Paul Tarmann, a philosopher and sport ethicist from the Pedagogical University Vienna. “Tougher sanctions and controls mean that chess is catching up with other sports. Without controls, players will assume that others are cheating and start to cheat themselves.”
“Tougher sanctions and controls mean that chess is catching up with other sports. Without controls, players will assume that others are cheating and start to cheat themselves.”
FIDE’s Fair Play Commission is preparing two important steps to fight cheating according to its secretary Yuri Garrett. First, there will be an initiative to professionalize anti-cheating staff. “There are less than ten people in the world today who really understand anti-cheating. There are legal, psychological, statistical and technical aspects, and on top of that you need to understand chess, too.”
Garrett goes on to point out: “Arbiters and fair play officers are two different animals.” His commission wants to see specialists at every important event. An online training for Fair Play Assistants is in the making. The idea is that they shall cooperate with a remote Fair Play Officer and with experience grow into that role, too.
The second measure is the installation of a screening system to monitor ongoing games for suspicious overlaps with computer moves. If a player makes many more computer moves than would be expected from his rating, the fair play staff shall be alerted to observe and possibly control the suspect, explains Garrett and stresses that FIDE fully trusts the statistical analysis tools of University of Buffalo computer scientist Ken Regan.
“Organisers that don’t deliver on anti-cheating will be punished by the market.”
Garrett foresees that metal scanners and other more sophisticated devices will become a standard in international tournaments, but insists that the users should familiarise themselves with their correct use. “Organisers that don’t deliver on anti-cheating will be punished by the market.”