Borislav Ivanov strikes again!

Peaple who call a fair person cheater are crap

People who call people crap for calling a fair person cheater are crap.

Your turn.

this tournament seems to be deleted in chess-results for whatever reason but here you can see the results:

http://old-capital-2013.chessmix.com/results.html

in the last round borislav ivanov was paired against sikolov sasho for the 2nd time in the tournament and sasho forfeited both games.
so ivanov should have been 1 point ahead of 2nd place but he doesn't show up in the final standings. was he disqualified?
does anybody know anything about this tournament and what was going on there?

Valeri Lilov made a nice video recently where he told the story of what happened in this latest tournament (with the 3 wins on forfeit). The organisers put a rule in that stated no player with more than 2 wins on forfeit was allowed to take a prize - so Ivanov doesn't even show up in the standings because of that.

http://www.chess.com/blog/TigerLilov/chess-cheating---episode-4-a-new-hope

There IS proof, the statistical match with the Houdini 3 moves, is even higher than Carlsen or Capablanca and then he beats many GMs in a row.

And then he goes and loses to <2000 people.

And then he win against GMs again.

Apparently he did not have a year to improve that drastically. He performed poorly at an open only one week before the tournament in Zadar (according to Lilov).

So his drastic improvement must have taken place in that very week between those two chess tournaments. Needless to add (I'm doing it anyway) that even if you play Houdini nonstop for a week, you are not going to jump from a ~2k performance to a ~2.7k performance.

I am personally convinced that Ivanov is cheating... but I don't like that rule, since it makes it possible to cheat an honest player out of his prize.

Yeah, I'm sure it can be abused. The simplest way to block Ivanov from tournaments is surely just to refuse his entry.

You'd have to catch him cheating, first.

As far as I'm convinced, it's been proved that he is. Most of the top Bulgarian players have all signed a letter stating they will not play in tournaments in which he is playing. If he was playing these games on chess.com, in correspondence time controls, he would be banned for cheating, and no-one would blink.

Can a TD not refuse a player entry to a tournament, at his discretion? If not, then why not? If so, then it should be used in this case. For me, it's not necessary to catch him red-handed. Not in this case.

You are per definition unguilty untill it is proved that you are  guilty

That's the whole thing though: I'm arguing that he has been proved guilty, through the statistical analysis of Lilov, and others. Statistically, it's as damning as DNA in a criminal case. And he was definitely at the scene of the crime!

You mean Ivanov isn't "the future" of Chess? 

As a certified time traveller I can assure you, he is not.

Wow, that rule is the biggest crap I have ever heard.

Players should never be given the opportunity to deprive other players of their prizes.

I'm all for catching cheaters, but that HAS to be the decision of the TO.

Even when they use unorthodox methods, like having an engine make the moves for you, to achieve those aforementioned prizes?

And as far as I understood it, everyone has the right to forfeit his games to anybody, but a rule states that a player who "won" 3 games this way won't be eligible for the prize money, not just Ivanov alone. In normal cases when everybody plays nice, this rule doesn't need to be enforced because nobody wants to intentionally lose his games. But I wouldn't want to compete against an engine either, and the others must have had the same reason to throw the towel. This rule simply prevents suspected cheaters to grab some money they never deserved.

Yes, even then.

The problem lies in the suspected. 

As soon as you have proof its no problem to just let the TO disqualify him, but here you give the players the opportunity to take something away from someone even if he wasn't cheating. What if someone was doing great but got unlucky and his last two opponents got sick. What if some players really dislike one guy and want to make sure he doesn't get anything, so they sacrifice their own games.

Yes, the players are hurting themselfes in the process and in this case it might have been ok, but ultimately it boils down to the following:

Systems that can be abused will be abused, at any level of play. Catching cheaters is the TOs resposibility and not the players(they should obviously be able to state their opinion, but the final call should never be theirs to make). Here the TO not only pushed the responsibility onto the players, but he also gave them a way to manipulate the prize payout in the process, both things that should not have happend.

An incident where 3 different players forfeit their games happens just very rarely to begin with. And Ivanov isn't just a "suspected cheater" anymore. As others have said before, if he'd have pulled off the same tricks on Chess.com, the consequences would've been the same, that is denying this person from playing Chess. But I understand your concerns too, ... it's just that cheaters normally get busted fairly quick, but in the case of Ivanov we are faced with a totally unprecedented form of cheating which can't be detected by the regular methods. So I believe the boycott was justified, even though it spoiled the whole tournament. But I bet Mr. Ivanov doesn't really care about such petty things like good sportmanship or ruining the spirit of the game with his actions, he just wants the money. 

actually just 2 different players forfeited their games against ivanov :-)

beside that i'm with paK0666 regarding the stupidity of the rule.

it can be abused and innocent players could suffer.

it shouldn't be the players to decide if he's cheating or not.

btw: the rule just states that a player with 3 wins by forfeit doesn't get a prize. but why didn't he show up in the final standings?  

if they cannot find any evidence of cheating then he must be one of the new good ones. we have to see him how he plays with 2700s or 2800s.