A smartphone with a homemade app solves the mystery of the Bulgarian 'Chess Comet' Borislav Ivanov! He will never win a tournament game again at his current rating level (or much lower) without shoes! A smartphone in a shoe with a chess app like Houdini explains it all. Together with a homemade phone app that signals the moves via vibrations is a simple explanation of the fame og Mr Ivanov. I'll bet he knows something about programming phone apps!
An advice for chess players in the future: "Wash your toes and go with clean socks! You will be checked!"☺
Wondering how many current GMs using the same trick?!
Borislav Ivanov is BACK!
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I'm having a little trouble seeing how this works. Maybe it's that my big clunky feet wouldn't be good at this but it is hard to see how I could quietly enter a move (which takes maybe 12 bits of data) into my machine and then receive some move in some kind of code to my feet. I do think I could pretty easily build an x-86 compatible shoe however (I thought the "Shoedini" quip above was clever enough that I am going to steal it and claim credit).
Edit: I think it would be completely excellent if one of his shoes caught on fire in the middle of a chess game.
duck29 wrote:
AlxMaster wrote:
duck29 wrote:
maybe he really does have smelly feet, how could he relay the moves to the computer in his shoes anyway? or maybe he has a very sensitive listening device in his shoes and every turn he whispers the move he did so the move is relayed back to his second partner in crime who checks it up on houdini and then relays back to ivanov the computers suggested move through a zapping technique in his toes that sends him the correct brainwave of the move.
come on! thats highly unlikely. maybe he has a tumor in his foot or something. It might be suspicious that he didnt remove shoes but that he was cheating isnt the answer.
Morse code is not "highly unlikely", on the contrary, it's almost certain.
And speaking about socks, I feel the smell of sock...puppets.
hmmmm thats possible maybe he taps his toes onto his smartphone which is on walkie talkie mode and is on TALK in morse code and then receives the moves back with something which taps morse code of the move back onto his foot.
OR he has a tumor in his foot and thats why he wears big sneakers and why hes embarrassed to take off his shoes and why his feet stinks.
since theres no proof i think its safe to assume option 2
Any person who is losing money and reputation, IF was innocent, wouldn't mind even shiwing his a**, let alone his feet.
The only logical explanation for not showing his feet is because something incriminating was there.
And he insisted for about 10 minutes until was able to get away without taking off his shoes. Let's hope next time there will be cops investigating him for fraud and soon we will have a thread with the good news.
And some advice: search inside the shoes, since his system is morse-coded, the device may be hidden inside. He may hide them even in some way that the shoe can't be opened manually, specially now that he is aware everyone knows where to search.
DeweyOxberger wrote:
People have been using devices in shoes to cheat at card games for decades. This not a new and novel approach.
I suspect there are other people doing this same shoe-computer technique but aren't giant dumb asses about it haven't been caught.
Eventually everyone will have to play chess wearing sandals, but then the cheaters will invent a chess playing butt plug and relay the moves by squeezing their sphincter. It's only a matter of time until chess players will be subject to cavity searches.
Unfortunately, that is true. But cavity searches won't be necessary, instead a rigorous anti-cheating test to determine the true rating of each player, such as the test Ivanov recently missed.
I would not be surprised if at least one of the current top GM is a cheater, it takes only a little more subtlety than Ivanov not to make it so obvious and still win a lot of money.
Rigorous chess strength tests are the only way for the future.
I wonder if such devices could be surgically implanted? I have left and right knee total replacement and total left shoulder replacement. Could such a device be placed in say my replaced left shoulder?
Such a device can be surgically implanted, but an anti-cheating test would offer random positions and ask the player's response to measure his true chess strength and limit his activity only below the strength shown there.
Only in games starting from the initial position could the device be used.
That's why I maintain that detecting the device may become impossible, but an anti-cheating test would still work.
You can implant things surgically but you would be out of your mind to surgically implant a chess playing computer. The rule of thumb is that you have less rejection problems the deeper you implant things (I think this is cool - your body thinks it is much more likely to be invaded close to the sking than deep in your liver). Fake hips work better than fake knees. A chess computer isn't just titanium or steel but contains batteries and chips and some way of communicating. It's not clear how you could communicate with it if it was deep in your body and near your skin, you'd have your body trying to expel it. All in all, you would be at major health risk for winning some chess games. I'd need to win a world championship to take on that risk (and then I'd feel like a terrible fake so it would suck).
What a clown. Glad they figured it out.
ponz111 wrote:
I wonder if such devices could be surgically implanted? I have left and right knee total replacement and total left shoulder replacement. Could such a device be placed in say my replaced left shoulder?
It's very possible. The biggest problems I think would be to find a doctor willing to preform the surgery and (for me anyway) paying for the surgery!
Of course it couldn't be Ivanov's device. You'd have to have something new designed.
There are a few points in this story that don't add up:
1. In the room there was a sweep with metal detectors before the shoe thing. Why didn't the metal detectors pick up the phone!?
2. If it would be a phone, the strongest engine would be Stockfisch on Droidfish right? Is Stockfisch on Android strong enhough to beat a GM?
3. The arbiter said Borislav was to be disqualified, but still Borislav turns up for the next round??
Oct 4, 2013
0
#32
Woohoo! The Ivanov saga is finally over!
Sadly, as Dlugy and many others have pointed out, this could just be the beginning...
From the above, I suppose we will reach a point where it is possible to cheat with no chance of being caught (hopefully we haven't reached that point yet) which will be a disaster for chess (and lots of other fields too). In general, the cheats in life (burglars, sports drug cheats, cv liars) spoil it for a lot of people don't they?
2. If it would be a phone, the strongest engine would be Stockfisch on Droidfish right? Is Stockfisch on Android strong enhough to beat a GM?
Houdini 3 running on a powerful machine outside the event and a person to send the moves is more than enough.
lol when your whole reputation at stake, you are worried about smelly shoes?
Forget Ivanov, most improtant thing in that news item is that if an intelligent, 2600 player decides to use this same technology?
I am following big chess tournaments for some time now, I have studied games of some previous greats and with whatever intelligence I have,I can say that if someday a news comes that a certain super GM of today was intelligently using engine all the time, I won't be surprised. I really suspect one super GM is playing too good for humans.
Part of me wishes that a couple of people would have been willing to hold down Ivanov and forcibly take off his shoes and photograph the hardware (and deal with the legal consequences), but then I suppose the deniers would just say that they weren't his shoes and it was a mass conspiracy that fabricated the whole event.
Unfortunately though, the idiots out there will still argue that there is no hard evidence, and perhaps Ivanov can "find" a testimony from a psychiatrist that he has had a phobia about taking off his shoes due to "smelly sock syndrome" for many years and that is the only reason he was unwilling.
I found it strange that people thought that the most likely signal was a vibration of morse code. Have you ever been out somewhere when you are supposed to have your phone off and it's set to vibrate? EVERYONE can hear it!! 
I'm not saying that he didn't cheat, I'm just curious why no one was listening for vibrations.
Disgruntled_Sheep wrote:
I found it strange that people thought that the most likely signal was a vibration of morse code. Have you ever been out somewhere when you are supposed to have your phone off and it's set to vibrate? EVERYONE can hear it!!
I'm not saying that he didn't cheat, I'm just curious why no one was listening for vibrations.
- Maybe it's a device specially designed
- The place where the tournament goes on may be noisy
- The amount of vibration can be controlled
- It's inside his shoe which prevents the sound from being heard and vibrating other objects
Ignacio_Lizarraga wrote:
I think it's simply impossible to manage an electronic device like a cell phone with the toes... and inside of a shoe!
Do not underestimate the artfulness of toes.
Indyfilmguy wrote:
PhoenixTTD wrote:
I don't know how this works in other countries but this is theft. A serious crime. Some tournament should work with authorities and get a court order for the search. Have police force it and then arrest.
Hey yo, I can't say about how this works in other countries at all but in regard to the United States and its constituent states, this sort of thing may be considered theft, fraud, or false pretences but it really is not considered a serious crime.
It is a crime you go to prison for. It is not just a prank you play till you get busted and banned.
http://www.lawgazette.com.sg/2000-8/Aug00-focus3.htm
maybe he really does have smelly feet, how could he relay the moves to the computer in his shoes anyway? or maybe he has a very sensitive listening device in his shoes and every turn he whispers the move he did so the move is relayed back to his second partner in crime who checks it up on houdini and then relays back to ivanov the computers suggested move through a zapping technique in his toes that sends him the correct brainwave of the move.
come on! thats highly unlikely. maybe he has a tumor in his foot or something. It might be suspicious that he didnt remove shoes but that he was cheating isnt the answer.
Morse code is not "highly unlikely", on the contrary, it's almost certain.
And speaking about socks, I feel the smell of sock...puppets.
hmmmm thats possible maybe he taps his toes onto his smartphone which is on walkie talkie mode and is on TALK in morse code and then receives the moves back with something which taps morse code of the move back onto his foot.
OR he has a tumor in his foot and thats why he wears big sneakers and why hes embarrassed to take off his shoes and why his feet stinks.
since theres no proof i think its safe to assume option 2