Borislav Ivanov strikes again!

What's strange is no one can figure out how he's cheating if he really is... from what I've read they have checked him over and over. His person, the board, the pieces, etc. etc. etc. So far no one has found a thing to indicate he is cheating except his increased ability. So if he is cheating, he may not be the smartest chess player, but he's hella smart when it comes to cheating ability... Unless he had an electronic device implanted in his brain, it's hard to see how he is pulling this off. A smart drug? A memory drug so he can memorize Houdini lines? Or just a lot of prep work with Houdini?

Yeah, really brilliant to not bring your device to the search they announce to you in advance, be searched, they discover nothing, then lose your next game badly because you can't cheat.  /sarcasm

Well since Ivanov forfeited it seems reasonable to believe that GM Diugy is telling the truth... why forfeit when you could win $5000 and progress towards GM norms by taking off your shoes?

Ivanov was only too happy to half strip himself back in Zader by removing jacket and shirt and emptying his pockets etc, this is classic behavior of a guilty person knowing he won't be found out as all the cheating method was in his shoes. He had prepared for the day that he was asked to remove shoes and had that smelly sock excuse ready. What I find funny is that he  wrote on his scoresheet that his opponent Dlugy was a Clown and Ivanov is the one with the oversized shoes.

Can somebody export those devices to europe? I have the market cornered here. By the way is nike interested. They are in to sports and boosting performance.

This is becoming a downward spiral, as more and more players (mostly online, but in OTB tournament play as well) are compelled to cheat by the reasoning "many if not most of my opponents are likely to cheat, so I have to cheat as well to make sure I stand a chance".

It indeed looks like online and tournament OTB chess can only survive for another while (until assistance is possible in realtime and cannot be reasonably detected at all anymore) in the form of bullet and blitz respectively, and any longer time controls will have to be assumed to be centaur chess.

Cheating is nothing new though.  Even before electronics you could have your stronger friend look at your game, then you walk out of the playing hall and get suggestions.

There was one story of a kid going to the skittles room (where people play blitz for fun) and setting up his game position and asked (and received) advice from multiple players who of course didn't know it was an ongoing game.

Cheating with a hand held device is comparatively easier to prevent.

People who use speed games as an excuse to avoid cheating are fooling themselves.  If someone wants to cheat in a 3, 2, or even 1 minute game it's definitely possible.

In fact in games as slow as 2 minutes you don't even need a special set up, just plain make moves on the engine board then copy them yourself in the game.

As for the death of OTB chess in reference to Ivanov that sounds a lot like the sky is falling.  Cheating has always been possible.  The least likely type of cheating to deal a killing blow, IMO, would be people visiting the bathroom all the time... especially on their move, which no one does anyway.

The highly technical methods, I would think, would almost entirely be in tournaments with a large prizes... the tournaments where you'd expect things like metal detectors or searches of suspicious players.  That may be the biggest change, the searches / metal detectors at tourneys with big prizes.

Tournaments with the 60 minute games are so fast I won't play them.

30 minute "tournament" games is the same as killing chess... and wouldn't prevent cheating anyway heh.

That's true, others would be able to enjoy it.  Hopefully more than that year's bus load of kids whose parents though chess would be a good summer activity.

I couldn't care less how popular chess is.  Pros can make a living.  World champions are millionaires.  That's well beyond adequate IMO.

As you pointed out it would only kill chess as I know and enjoy it.  When what I call the serious players quit, others will fill their places... mostly school aged children I think but that doesn't really matter.

As for my 2nd paragraph by that I mean I don't see a need for it to increase in popularity when I take the benefit of increased popularity as growing / enhancing the professional scene.

Chess is meant to be long. It is supposed to make you think and calculate deeply. Bullet and blitz, i.e. "fast" chess, is not true chess to me. Cheating is something that will never end and we, as players, just have to live with it.

Fixed.

eh...people cheat all the time on chess.com.  It's really easy to tell that you are playing a computer (which is, of course, the odd part about this controversy - I can tell when I am playing a computer easily but people are questioning whether GM's can tell whether they are playing a computer? Huh?).  Chess.com tries hard to stamp it out with varying results.  For example, chess.com says that if they think you are cheating they will kick you out but won't tell us how they know.  If I buy a book from say chess.com member NM Heisman, he has checked all the analysis in that book with whatever engine he likes.  If I play that analysis will chess.com ban me and put me on the wall of shame? 

I think we just live with it and if someone wants to beat me with Houdini I don't care.  Not like I haven't lost 10,000 chess games fairly.

Chess.com won't tell us how they know because that makes it easier for cheaters to try and work a way around it. It's similar to how people want to know how Ivanov does it. I suspect some want to copy the method to sneak past current security measures.

The "Paz de Ziganda" (Spain) Tournament that Ivanov "won" when he was an untitled 2300 was at 25 min per game.

Engine...

That is the question....How?

What I mean by "it is meant to be long" is that chess is a thinking mans game. It is hard to think and calculate deeply when you have 10 minutes for an entire game. Young people (I am only 18 by the way) enjoy fast chess because it gives faster results. This day and age the faster the better unless you are in the bedroom... so of course young people will like fast chess. I am not talking down to fast chess players, I am simply saying that "fast" chess and "slow" chess are two completely different games.