The day chess lost its innocence
Take a splendig long-haired wig, a pair of glasses, a tie and an elegant dark blazer.
Now you have everything you need to become a perfect chess cheater!
Why?
Let's jump back in time, precisely on December 30th, 1998. We are in Germany, in Böblingen, a city in the region of Baden-Württemberg, during the relative Open tournament. The last round is being played, and the focus is entirely on the clash between the players at the second board, the GM Sergey Kalinitschew and an unknown 55-year-old German named Clemens Allwermann, without Elo FIDE and with a national rating around 1900- 2000 for at least ten years. Allwermann is unbeaten, has 6.5 points out of 8 and has conceded only three draws, two to the GMs Sergey Galdunts (Armenia) and Vyacheslav Ikonnikov (Russia) and one to a 2145 Italian named Vincenzo Giacopelli. He has so far put on display a brilliant play without hesitation. If he wins, he has a great chance of winning the tournament (which will actually be won by Yuri Balashov for Buchholtz), and this is the position that occurs after Black's thirtieth move:
And at that point a very strange thing happens, even more than the previous ones: shaking his hand, Allwermann says to the opponent a phrase such as "In fact, it’s mate in eight moves".
What?!?! Mate in eight moves?! But who would ever be able to calculate it in such a position?
At that moment suspicion arises.
Kalinitschew, perhaps still under shock because of the defeat, at first babbles "I don't think" and then, brooding about it, begins to realize that something is not going in the right direction.
Not enough, Allwermann increases the dose: "Check, you'll see I'm right", with a smirk on his face.
Someone takes the trouble to check, and Fritz announces in a nutshell checkmate in nine moves. Nine and not eight, because Black has yet to move and therefore the move must be added to the count made by Allwermann.
The tournament ends, as mentioned above Balashov wins and Allwermann is second for Buchholtz. The German also collects the prize of 1660 German marks (at the time there was no euro, however it is the equivalent of about 850 euros).
But in the meantime Kalinitschew gets moving. A number of people go to work with Fritz and find that in all nine games played by Allwermann in that tournament many of his moves have a "computer flavor" and all are regularly replicated by Fritz. Except for one. Watch what happened in the second round, when Allwermann had made a draw against the Italian player:
According to some post-tournament reconstructions, everyone agreed that Allwermann used to go to the tournament hall dressed in a tie and a dark blazer, despite the high temperature. He also had long hair and wore eyeglasses. Immediately the hypothesis was made that Allwermann had hidden a receiver behind his ear and a mini camera in the tie, and that he received information from an external accomplice through a predefined code. The King was a "beep", the Queen a "beep-beep", the Rook a "beep-beep-beep" and so on; the same with the letters: column "a" was a "beep", "b" a "beep-beep", etc., and the same thing with the numbers. In this way, each move was a unique "beep" sequence. Perhaps during the second round, Allwermann or his accomplice had missed a "beep" and Bg2 had come out instead of Bh2. In fact, between the two moves there is only one "beep" of difference and, ironically, both are possible in the position of the diagram.
The World Federation had to face for the first time what it never would have wanted to face, but what fatally had to happen sooner or later: the suspicion of electronic doping.
Allwermann is questioned and defends himself, to say the least, clumsily, giving credit for his performance of 2650 to the assiduous study of the Sicilian Shveshnikov variation, emphasizing the crowning achievement of his 40-year chess career.
Needless to say, this only makes things worse. Nobody believes him, he is asked to admit the wrongdoing and return the prize, also because everyone is very curious about how he did it. Instead, Allwermann does not give an inch to his detractors.
Even Der Spiegel, the best-known German weekly magazine, which publishes the whole story, is uncomfortable, ironically concluding that a new star was born in Germany after Goethe, Beethoven and Einstein:
Furthermore, someone wonders: why didn’t Allwermann continue playing in the second round, after making the "wrong" move? After all, the position was still better, and with the help of Fritz he might have won as well. What if the answer was that the accomplice was not a chess expert and could not change the position during the game? This would explain the draw offer.
The investigations continue, and a decisive element emerges: an electronics shop is located nearby, whose owner recognizes Allwermann and remembers having sold to him an equipment of the type envisaged; indeed, he adds that Allwermann himself had insisted on making a change that would allow him to enter a 4-digit code in the radio transmitter.
It seems irrefutable evidence, but instead, a few months later, the Federation issues an innocence sentence for insufficient evidence, asserting that the moves replicated by Fritz did not represent the absolute evidence of cheating. But the Bavarian Chess Federation thinks otherwise, banning Allwermann from all its future tournaments.
After that tournament, Allwermann played another one in March 1999, the Bad Wörishofen Open. With all eyes on him, he scored 3.5 points out of 9, in perfect line with his expected score. After that he didn't play anymore important tournaments.
But by now chess had lost its innocence. Forever.
