I had another interesting conversation on ICC with someone, I'll call Joe,
who caught a chess cheater using a mobile phone. The cheater was having a
fantastic tournament with 6.5 out of 7 points against players who averaged
100 points higher in rating. It was a typical game, first 7 moves played
normally. Then the cheater started to get up from the board and walk away.
The cheater can be seen typing into his mobile phone. It was one of the
new Erickson phones.
Joe thought that maybe he was sending text message to
his girl friend. So Joe moves and the cheater comes back to the
board. He does not sit. He doesn’t even look at the board. 20 seconds
pass, he moves. Then the cheater walks away. Joe tells one of his chess
friends
that
his opponent is cheating by using a chess program on his mobile phone. So
this continues through the first time control.
The cheater gets up after every move, goes to the
corner of the room, takes out his mobile phone and begins typing. He
returns to the board and moves without sitting and thinking about the
position. Joe asked his friend to walk by his opponent and see what’s
going on with the cellular phone. Joe Friend walks by and sees the
chessboard on the mobile phone's screen. The cheater gets nervous and puts
the phone away. The cheater returns to the board to make his move. Joe
friend follows and after the cheater makes his move, Joe’s friend
confronts the cheater. Telling him that he saw the chess program running
on the phone. The cheater says he was just doing newspaper puzzles. The
cheater, caught red handed, resigns.
A week later, Joe discovered that the phone was using Chess genius 1.2 for
mobile phones. This is the same software that defeated Garry Kasparov in a
blitz game back in the early 90’s. The first computer ever to defeat a
World Champion in a game. The new mobile phones operate at 100-200mghz.
The genius that defeated Kasparov in a 25-minute game ran on a Pentium 100
back in 1991-1992.
The amazing thing was that the cheater was a very good player without the
mobile phone. Joe discovered that a friend had the same software running
on a PDA. They replayed the game and genius played the same moves that the
cheater did. The new palm pilots have chess software that plays around
2600 rating against humans. This was not a kid prank. The cheater was not
a kid but a man in his mid 30’s. Joe went to his federation, who looked
into the matter. The cheater has been banned for 3 years from tournaments.
It certainly is a good idea to bar all phones at tournaments. Recently
last year. Ruslan
Ponomariov was forfeited from a game, because his mobile phone rang
during a game. Now Ruslan was NOT cheating, but simply got a phone
call during a game. It is good to see that TD are strict about mobile
phone use. There was another interesting cheating story of a man using a
Novag sapphire with a blind man adaptation attachment. This cheater was
playing 600 points about his 1900 rating. He kept his hand in his pocket
all game long. I also recall a story in chess base in 2003, where
some one got caught
in the john using a pocket fritz.
another
cheating story
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