Cheating at the highest level in chess?

Note to mods: This thread does NOT discuss cheating on chess.com (which is so rare that it should not even be discussed, as chess.com does an amazing job catching cheaters). It talks about hypothetical cheating in elite OTB tournaments, which is within the site's rules - so please do not lock this thread. Thank you.

Anyway, now that the necessary disclaimer is out of the way, let me get to the topic of this thread. I think it is fairly uncontroversial to say that cheating is prevalent at the highest level in sports. Olympic gold-medalists are regularly found several years later to have been using illegal substances, whereupon they have their medals revoked. The same has happened to top finishers in other sporting events (*cough Lance Armstrong *cough). In team sports doping seems to be less common, but there are other forms of cheating - e.g. Juventus, Tim Donaghy and (allegedly) the New England Patriots.

By comparison, the history of top-level chess seems... remarkably clean. To my knowledge, no elite level players have been convicted, or even suspected with any seriousness, of cheating. So now, the question is: has there actually never been any cheating at the top level in chess, or is it the case that cheating has occurred, but has never been discovered? And if you think it is the former, I'm particularly interested in why, in your opinion, chess has been so much cleaner than sports (or other sports, as some would say).

So... thoughts, anyone?

I don't know about the elite level, but at national tournaments it's quite common to find players using illegal devices to cheat.  Of course chess isn't a sport and doping wouldn't help, unless it's some drug to improve concentration.

I read somewhere that Fischer was convinced his opponent's cheated by prearranging draws. Not sure how that was supposed to benefit them or why he was convinced.  

I believe he thought it was a way for the Soviet players to save energy when playing against each other. Many of the drams between the Soviet players were rather short, but there is no direct evidence of pre-arranged games or any other form of shady dealings.

I think the difference is that with the sports you mentioned the cheating takes place before the event and cheating in chess only works during the game. More obvious = less attractive.

Saying that I have no proper knowledge on it and cheating might be widespread, just seems less likely with chess

you should search on what famous Soviet GMs have said, ie; Bronstein and Korchnoi

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/soviet-cheating-in-fide-competition-zurich-1953

There are some GMs who have been accused of cheating. Georgian GM Nigalidze has been caught if I am not mistaken. There was also a controversy around German GM Bindrich who was accused of cheating (although no proof could be found.)

On a very high level, some people claimed that Danailov sent signals to Topalov, without proving it of course.

Actually, I'd say an unspoken rule is to not convict the most elite chess players in general of cheating. 

In an extreme case, for instance if Hikaru wins 100 games in a row in perfect style against Carlsen or something, then of course he's using an engine.

However, the elite players, if they wanted to cheat, could probably do so very very well, and Topalov has said himself that even 2-3 moves with computer consultation, per game, at the highest levels, can greatly increase your playing strength via critical positions. 

So it would be nearly impossible to catch at the top levels. Just don't worry about them seems to be the general consensus. 

Yeah I heard Anand say sometime that all he would need is an indication that there is something in a position leading to an advantage, not even a specific move.

Who is that guy? I don't recognize him.

 Luciano Moggi (Calciopoli, Juventus). He looks badass in that photo.

Back to chess...I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Toiletgate yet.

I see.

As for Toiletgate, the chess world generally doesn't take Topalov's accusations seriously. The incident is nothing compared to the Juventus scandal, where actual titles were stripped.

Does anybody else think it bizarre that just because the Nixon tapes were recorded at the Watergate hotel all future scandals should have the suffix 'gate' added? 

I blame journalists and their need to give stupid names to everything for it.

By the way, I just remembered Kasparov accused the team behind Deep Blue of cheating.

The mechanical Turk was the original cheat.

So... basically cheating?

An unspoken rule which chess.com practices.

If anyone cared to read Bobby nuts posts you would realize that Karpov and Kasparov cheated by premaking the games.

I corrected your post.