I saw another thread about How To Win at Chess (in other words, it was about motorcycles?! Yeah, really ) So I am calling this one How To Cheat At Chess, like the title of that old Chess humor book; and will see what shows up here. But maybe part of it will be ways that players Have or Might be trying to win with "outside the box" thinking, which may just happen to have been "outside the law" too!? ...whether the ideas be serious examples from the past, or creative new thoughts on where the Chess Knave may go. I'll start off with some I've seen or heard of ...
ACTUAL:
1.The "GM" or was it "SM" from India, thanks to Analysis VIA Blue Tooth!
2. I read in another thread here at CHESSdotCOM about someone's friend who tried using high-frequency sound waves to disturb their opponent. That's rather new thinking ...
3. I saw one tournament where a player-A would be paired with one of three out-of-town players who however were frequent entrants to events at that site. In seeking to avenge a loss from the previous tournament, the players opponent got together with the friends and invited player-A to partake in smoking of a mind/mood altering substance. One that they no doubt hoped would make the player too silly, sleepy or Hungry to be 'on his game' ... supposing that they could partake as well and triumph, being more accustomed to the smoke & play concept. Unfortunately for the tricksters, player-A later confided to me he found this try at a 'drink him under the table' strategy to be highly entertaining since he knew he had an abnormally high liver metabolism that would clear anything from his system in about half the normal time. And in fact was completely sobered by the time he needed to attack and mate his opponent with pawns in the endgame. Score one for the good-guys!
4.Remember the WCC (WaterClosetChampionship) between Kramnick and Topalov? Was there really a micro-computer hidden in the loo? Or notes passed in through the window?? Does Kramnick Really have all lines of Comprehensive Petroff Defense tattooed upon his left leg ?? ! Will we ever Know? Do we Want to Know?!![Whatever happened to the good-old-days of MCO & pocket set in the bathroom?? Or even the next generation with Kasparov Travel Champ in the loo?? Would a WC calibre player really stoop to getting Notes? Doesn't he have a cell-phone?!? ] Did the Topalov camp Really use hand-signals when walking into the hall to transmit moves? Or was it just the sign to "Steal First Base"?
5.Did Bobby Fischer's WCC chair Really shoot micro-waves across the board at Boris Spassky?
6.Was Karpov really using a hypnotic psychologist against Viktor Korchnoi ...or receiving move instructions, as claimed, by the color or texture of the yogurt brought to him on stage? (And -I- ask ...what about blueberry count! the Brand Name? Thick/Light/Whipped/or FRUIT on the Bottom!!?Clearly much information can be transmitted by Yogurtism~!).Which begs the Question: What did he need with a hypnotist if he had the Yogurt Advantage ??? !!
7. The guy who Taps. Tap, tap ... tap, tap, taps his foot ... click, click, clicks his pen. Blows a ring of cigar smoke around your king. Then breaks out laughing as you drop a pawn?
8. Waiting for opponent Time Troubles before beginning to tackle and strew six pieces assunder with each move you make? Then if he restarts your clock to clean up, putting the pieces back with positional improvements; since he has no time to check it out...
9. She tried to blow their minds ... insisting opponents with WT use her board; left crumpled and frozen all week, then blow-dried to flatten-out the two inch waves... for Awhile; until late in the game when it progressively reverts to its monstrous & concentration-breaking True Nature ...and pieces begin to topple or slide down the crests where she waits in ambush ....
WILL IT SOMEDAY BE TRIED?!
1. "Doctoring" your cell-phone frequency emmision to stop an opponent's pacemaker ??!
2. Bringing a cell-phone blocker into the tournament hall so you can't get moves from Uncle Fred, the family IM ?! [...and keeps you from stopping your opponent's heart]
3. Inform the opponent of your recent bout of Flesh-eating bacteria, after realizing you just moved your Queen en-prise ... Of course you have already made sure he saw you sneeze on your hand every 5th move; just in case something like this happened.
Clearly, there is great room for creativity during a game of Chess . . .
hahahahha!!!!!! that was great reading thnx....
hehehehehe!!!!
If I could find the exact location of my opponent I could try sending microwaves in their direction (ha-ha)
That aside, cheating of a more insiduous nature probably goes on. For my part, win or lose, its me against my opponent - period! Its the only way to learn and to get personal satisfaction from your play.
I felt a need to respond as there was the word "Cheat" in the title. My ways involves no harm to others or danger to one's health--and I thought I was immoral.
I'm sure you all are familiar with MY ways of cheating at OTB tourneys. You're not? Well, it looks like there are some new members here who may not be familiar with how to cheat at Over The Board Tourneys. I did it several times and NO ONE was hurt.
1) Wireless earpiece (flesh Colored) in my ear.
2) Wireless mini-Camera (hidden under your shirt, using top button of shirt as lens).
3) A Friend with your favorite chess program running on a laptop in a van outside of tourney locale.
4) Your friend has a crystal clear image of YOUR board on his laptop. He speaks into a microphone "E4". You hear it in your ear as if he was right next to you. You move E4. When your opponent responds, your accomplice inputs that move into Fritz and then whispers Fritz's move in your ear. INSTANTLY you are playing at 2800 level. Heck, you don't even have to know the first thing about chess to play at super GM level. Beautiful isn't it?
Besides, other than your opponent's pride and ego, nodoby gets hurt. It is a VICTIMLESS event. Besides, you may even make a few $$$ doing it. How bad can this be?
victimless? not quite, but that's beside the point.
Cheating in that fashion would be very easy to spot, and even easier to verify, unless you were using a computer program not available to the general public.
I knew it. I putting on my tin foil hat to block the microwave signals. I knew it. I should of been a GM but those damn microwaves and all that tapping, tap, tap tap. Damn it!
pick your nose, and then adjust his pieces :)
when time starts to run out... stick a pin in your chess clock in a way that he will have to press extremely hard to pass the move, and win three seconds at least!
no more ideas right now...
URITBON ... Yes indeed. Just as soon as he gets his clock punched, you declare, "OH MY ~ How DID that get There??" ...as you yank the "Pin"-seeming object from the clock & deftly screw it onto the tip of the hypodermic-syringe you just pulled from your pocket. Unfortunately it sticks you & your finger begins a phenomenal display of uncontrolled bloodflow (since you made sure to take extra aspirins that morning, to be sure of it). There it goes; your great gushing gyser of Chess-Luck, all over: his clock-button, all your Major-Pieces & even his King ...that you now place in
CHECK. ...Picking up your magazine to wipe it off and stating, "D@#% , I ruined my favorite magazine too~!!". Setting it aside, it will flip shut, revealing itself to be the current issue of "Hepatitis Today".
*** *** ***
BUT not to forget, continuing the previous ACTUALS:
#10 ~ Graciously you have provided the clock for your game; that you lovingly honed & personalized just the night before, removing exactly .3237 milli-meters from the Flag-tips, to be certain it will fall at the precise moment the minute hand travels .0001 micro-nano-meters onto the "black" of the ZeroTime mark at 0:00 o'clock.
You won't need to worry which Flag YOU get for the game since, just to be FAIR, both are thus adjusted to fall with identical prematurity. And you will both know about it. You know now, and your opponent will know in 59:9999 minutes. Fair is fair. Sort of . . . ]
The continuing saga Counter-Move ...after he has bled and handed you Hepetitis Today(see above), you will of course whip out your surgical mask, pull on the rubber gloves, spray something that reminds everyone of mustard-gas, before deftly giving Check, and saying "UnCheck & Check my unfortunate Chessfriend, but would you mind ...cleaning a bit of that mess; restore the board on your time and all that, chap ..." and punching clock.
Ow ... I just saw someone mention in another thread; Chess programs INSIDE PACEMAKERS~! Ya, now There we go. Let em test for THAT.
Uh, on the otherhand, this would mean FIDE wants to pull our heart out, right?
Well I don't need to worry about how to cheat because I can win without cheating. Yes that is right I can win against whoever I play.
whoever u play?
Hmm yeah.
What the hay.
DISCLAIMER: In no way do I recommend anyone to try this. After all, cheating is not fair. But just as an FYI . . .
This takes some preparation, but removes any Lost game that might otherwise be about to befall you Online; without detection by the CHESSdotCOM system.
First you need to take apart your old, useless nondigital television set (don't get electrocuted by the high-voltage tripler ...or the capacitor, that can get you even after its unplugged. So you probably should get an electrician to do this part, now that I think of it ...) Once apart, detach the magnetic ring from the picture tube and you will have a very powerful magnet at your disposal. Keep this next to you while accessing the Chess game you intended to lose. (This will work especially well for Live Chess too.)
As you are about to lose, take magnet in your right hand and place it upon front of your PC. Be sure it covers the "C" drive. Now keeping magnet in contact with PC frame, dance widdershins around PC 7 times(your lucky number). AND now you will find ALL RECORD of the offensive game has been removed utterly from your computer, and will Never reappear there... UNLESS you are running a dual-corr, which is not recommended but still fixable....
First step, find ANOTHER old useless TV set . . .
BTW ...This IS a Joke.
It has been pointed out elsewhere, there might be someone somewhere who does not understand that subjecting your hard-drive to a strong magnetic field may tend to wipe ALL information off of it, as well as Losing Chess Games. Including Windows, Firefox, and even Chess Wins . . . So don't do this at home, or office for that matter~! The point is ... The PRICE of Cheating is Too High~!
[Study, Study, Study~! I put in 5000+ hours of Chess study and play; as a result, I have almost qualified to tell Chess-related jokes in the CHESSCOM Forum ...]
Sincerely or Otherwise,
CJM Baron{ChessJokeMeister}
HI Rob ... nice to see you here too. Yeah, I am still there too and even have one game. That was just my Title,+Initials,+Name there for Nik ...nothing creative. Hey you must've accidentally put your computer on the TV or maybe it was an unexpected occurance of the Northern Lights, to your town zapping computers as it went, ya?
When I was a kid, it took four cheapo-set rule books to get a good grasp of the game and even then, I thought Kings could be taken~! Besides that there was a lot of "My House" Chess rules which no one ever mentioned Before a game... Only as they would come up. But hey, We Two survived childhood Chess ... (a real goal, as you point out!) now the Chess World is ours! (maniacal laughing here....)
We have got to be careful how we interpret a players win, lose , draw % (Dinamo). There are times when you have a bad streak for whatever reasons. I am having a streak of losses (by my standards) now and I welcome it because my grade was getting ridiculously high - above what I believe is my real playing strength.
Come to think of it - some players 'default' in tournaments and their grades go down to sustainable levels. Is that cheating of a different nature? Discuss.
Hi Madpawn, Sounds like a bit of a gray area to me. At least here in the USA, if someone loses games to INTENTIONALLY lower their rating we call it Sandbagging. Strange thing, I cannot recall an actual rule in USCF saying that it cannot be done, tho they have taken a lot of measures in some tournaments to prevent that, such as installing rating floors and an indicator of just how highly rated somene has been in the past. Also limits upon prizes to those more than so far below their best Elo, at the tournament time.
In fact I had something similar to that happen to me in a London tournament where they limited the prize I could win since I was unrated in BCF then, and had a former USA Expert rating that had fallen to class A then. But first round I knocked off a guy they brought down from Top Section for that round. Then another. And it was only THEN that I heard my prize elligibility was being limited. Rather unethical, in fact illegal in the USA, to do after a tournament commences. But I was just there for the experience of playing abroad and said nothing of it. In the following rounds tho , my play deteriorated and ending in a seizure like black out in the middle of the last round, losing to a very kind and sporting gent of exactly half my rating. (He was a fine fellow tho, and each time I would black out again he would cough or press the clock audibly, to "wake" me, since it looked like I was sleeping! :) The point here being tho, that although, Yes I Would play considerably stronger than my current USCF rating was ... still there was a reason that it had dropped so drastically, and the reason made itself apparent before the end. Naturally I won no prize with 2.5 of 5. I am sure it might have looked to some like i had sandbagged, and believe someone actually went to the TD about it, tho TD did not say so and I only heard it rumoured from another player talking. I think my BCF rating is like 120 now vs a USCF high almost 2100.
If someone does not deliberately shed points for the sake of lowering their rating to increase chances for prize money or tournament results then I don't see how it could be cheating per se. Tho it may indeed feel quite unfair to those who might have to face a player who has had their Elo circumstancially lowered due to whatever hardship occurred to do so.
I know some online Chess sites consider deliberate lowering to be rating "manipulation". And thus cheating there too. Somewhat ironically perhaps, to artificially INCREASE one's Elo is ALSO Rating Manipulation and banned. :) I have seen a number of sites and actually caught players playing themself from a Second or Third account there, in order to get those accounts a high provisional rating and then they would beat the b-jeepers out of thier new accounts with the one they wished to inflate. Even to up around 3000 rating. Complete silliness. Then usually they would never even Play anyone with that account, but just log-in and Sit there on top of the rating list of active players for the day, and fear to play Anyone!
Now is that a fine Sport or what ?!
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