Can You Cheat Over The Board?
Hello Everybody,
Today I have the question can you cheat in over-the-board chess? That is a hot topic, isn’t it? Over the course of the last two years, chess players have been pointing fingers, hoping to catch someone in the act of cheating. Of course, there are many different types of cheating like piece manipulation, match fixing, engine cheating, etc. The two main types of cheating nowadays take place over the board (OTB) and online using an engine. Today, we will be focusing more on the OTB side of things, for I believe if you are going to cheat online, you are either an attention craver, or you are a higher-rated player doing it for the money. What I do not believe is that if you are going to cheat in prize money events, you would stream it live on the internet! For in the words of Hikaru Nakamura, “If you are going to cheat, you are going to sit alone in your room, in your underwear with a phone in your hand.” Or something along those lines. But that is enough of the theatrics; let’s look at some of the most infamous instances of chess cheating.
One of the earliest recorded instances of someone being caught cheating in chess was in the 1993 World Open where an unrated player calling himself John Von Neumann, after the famous mathematician, performed very well. He won and drew against several high-rated players while wearing headphones and a mysterious buzzing object in his pocket. Then, if it wasn’t weird enough, he lost his game against Daniel Shapiro on time, after only nine moves! He just stopped moving and sat there. The director of the tournament quizzed John with some simple chess positions, and he couldn’t even spot a back-rank checkmate. I bet that was an interesting spectacle.
Now, who here likes yogurt? You do? Well, you must be a cheater. You see, in the 1978 World Chess Championship match between GM Anatoly Karpov and GM Viktor Korchnoi, two men who already had severely opposing political views, during the match Korchnoi’s team accused Karpov of using yogurt as a color-coded scheme to cheat, an accusation that was quickly ruled groundless. But that’s not the only strange thing that happened in that match. Korchnoi was convinced that Karpov had hired a hypnotist, whom Karpov had hired to help him sleep, to hide in the audience. So, what does he do? He hires Steven Dwire and Victoria Shepherd, American members of an Indian sect, to teach Korchnoi meditation to counteract the “hypnosis.” One problem: Dwire and Shepherd were convicted of attempted murder and were out on bail pending a retrial. Yeah, I think I’m glad people are only accusing each other of using Stockfish today.
Let’s fast forward to 2006. It is the World Championship match between Veselin Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik. Topalov was behind 3-1 in the match when his team noticed that Kramnik was taking frequent trips to the bathroom. Maybe he just had Taco Bell? Either way, Topalov’s team complained to the arbiters, and both players’ private restrooms were closed. Kramnik was not pleased by this, however, and proceeded to sit outside the closed bathroom and continuously asked to be let back in which caused him to forfeit the next game. Eventually, the president of FIDE, Bessel Kok, flew in and the situation was eventually resolved, and the private bathrooms were reopened. However, later the walls to the bathrooms were taken down and a cable was found in the ceiling of Kramnik’s bathroom. Since the cable was behind the ceiling and would have been impossible to make use of without a computer or some type of device, the match standings remained the same, crowning Kramnik the winner.
What happens when grandmasters are caught cheating? Well, one of the most tragic cheating scandals was committed by, at the time, Grandmaster Igors Rausis in 2019. Rausis was photographed by an unknown photographer in the bathroom while playing a tournament, with the position displayed on his phone. He was banned from competitive chess for six years, and his grandmaster title was revoked. Igors was not the first grandmaster to be caught cheating, however. A few years prior, GM Gaioz Nigalidze was caught cheating in the bathroom after GM Tigran L. tipped off the arbiter. The crazy part is that five years later, GM Tigran L himself was caught cheating in the exact same fashion. For goodness’ sake! I am about ready to just start playing Sudoku.
The last chess cheating accusation I want to talk about is arguably the most famous. Yes, you know the one I’m talking about. In 2020, Magnus Carlsen lost a chess game to, at the time, International Master Hans Niemann. After the game, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament, keeping his reasons vague. Chess.com later released a report staing that Niemann likely cheated more than 100 times online when he was seventeen, some of which were in prize money events, and they proceeded to ban Niemann from their site. Niemann later confessed in an interview that he had cheated when he was twelve and sixteen but never in prize money events. The drama continued for some time, consisting of Niemann filing a lawsuit against Chess.com and Carlsen for 100 million dollars. Eventually, the lawsuit was dismissed from federal court, and Niemann was allowed back on the Chess.com site.
Now that we have looked at several instances of infamous chess cheating scandals, we are again posed with the question: Can you cheat in over-the-board chess? While yes, we do know the people who were caught or accused, we don’t actually know how much they cheated or how many other cheaters there may be. So, do we have a cheating problem? Maybe, but we have no real way to tell besides randomly pointing fingers. But I like to think that the opponents I play are just trying to enjoy the game the same way I am. But how would you cheat? How would you pull it off while sitting at the board surrounded by players and arbiters? I have discussed this topic with friends, and we have come up with a few extravagant James Bond-like ideas, but they were all a bit too far-fetched or too expensive for the average player.
So what are your thoughts? Is everyone a cheater? Is everyone just paranoid? Why would you cheat? I would love to hear your thoughts and I thank you for reading this edition of TheWriter07’s Thoughts On The Board. Until next time.
Sincerely, TheWriter07
