Chess 960: The Soulution to Electronic Cheating?

The has been a LOT of hot air expended on both sides of the debate over "electronic cheating". Electronic cheating is a FACT. A 12 y.o. was recently caught using a USCF approved electronic device which was allegedly hack proof --  12 year old!!! But  the kid was caught with the device.

We enter far murkier waters when electronic cheating is "detected" through statistical analysis, by comparing the games played to the moves suggested by a chess engine such as Houdini, Rybka, et al. In online play statistical analysis is all that can relied upon to "detect" electronic cheating. It gets even murkier in OTB play where statistical analysis suggests beyond a shadow of a doubt that the player is in fact cheating, but no electronic device is found on them, and in spite of intense scrutiny no one sees the player cheating. That poster boy here is Borislav Ivanov. Beyond the statistical analyis, there is no other proof he actually cheated.

Most of your opening books today show opening lines, all based on past games, which have subsequently been analysed in depth by  computers which which in turn suggest better moves, that the player only need memorize. If that is the case why would it come as a surprise that some player's -- say X -- games closely parallels a chess engines?!? Given his moves were produced by a chess engine which s/he memorized it should not come as a surprise at all. 

So what then is the solution,  given that  electronic cheating both online and OTB  is a very real problem? One solution would be to adopt a varient of chess that is constantly changing so that any advantage a would be cheater dependent upon an electronic device would be negated and  rendered moot. Chess 960 -- aka Fischer Random Chess -- shuffles the starting position with every game so no  two  games will start exactly the same. The game now becomes a true game of skill between the two players, and a chess engine is rendered impotent since they are all programed for "standard" chess. The board is the same, the pieces are the same, they move the same, only the starting position changes with each game.

This, of course would represent a major paradigm shift in what we call "chess", but when  a chess engine that can be purchased for a few dollars, can beat the strongest of GM's, is it OK to accuse or suspect your opponent of "cheating" based upon statistical analysis alone?? I think Bobby Fischer, regardless of his personal failings, of which there were many, was decades ahead of his time when he came up  with the concept of what we now call either Chess 960 or Fischer Random Chess.

"Purists" may want to keep "Chess" as we know  it, but then the allegations player "A" beat player "B" because player "A" used some electronic device -- even if "A" has no such device on him --  are going to become much more common place, and ultimately destroy the  pleasure we derive out of a "simple" game of chess. 

Modernists -- pragmatists -- will acknowledge that electrontic cheating is only going to get  worse, and in an effort to put the joy back into the game adopt a variant of chess that minimizes the posibility your  opponent is relying upon some electronic device  to generate his  moves.

Is Chess 960 -- Fischer Random Chess --  the wave  of the future?? Or is  "Classical Chess"  to hold sway?? If so how do  you ensure that electronic cheating  does not take  place?

not sure what you mean as engines actually can play chess960 (or any random position, for that matter) without any trouble - the only "issue" is the 960 castling rule but some engines already support it.

Interesting thoughts. But plese tell me more about the 12 year old with the electronic device. Do you have a link to an article? Thanks

Andre

Here's a link to that story (I think it's the same one):

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8362701/the-evolution-cheating-chess

I don't think you can stop cheating using stats, I think you can only catch the blatant cheaters this way.

I don't believe chess960 is the answer either, as LoveYouSoMuch pointed out.

You need to be able to search for devices at OTB events, this is the only way IMO. As for on-line chess, you just have to accept you're going to encounter the occasional cheater.

Fixed.

That's not at all what he said.

well, he said a chess engine would be rendered "impotent since they are all programmed for standard chess", which is obviously not the case.

that said, i agree with your point, if i got it correctly - while we don't have "960 theory", the average statistical significance of each game for "cheating check" purposes is greater.

Yeah, Ivanov's 99.99...% was out to what?  6 or 7 decimal places?  Definitely room for improvement there.

Cheating every move is the easiest to catch.  And using opening book unintelligently as Ivanov did makes it even easier (or at least much more suspicious).

Assuming that's what was meant (as already pointed out, it's easy to reprogram the software to play chess960), that's still a non-issue.

The statistical analysis thingie is used only after taking out the opening moves (= the moves that have already been played in some past game). IF you want, you can add a 5-move margin to make sure it is not a very well-prepared novelty.

Whatever the margin you choose, there will be some blatant cheaters who will get caught, and some not-so-blatant that will go through statistical detection unless you put a really tight threshold.

ok ok... so know you will get Ivanov playing with engines from move 1... and then he will got the 99.99% match again...

why do you want that if you are still going to say that the TDs need to "produce" the device?

I think there are 2 steps to make a decent dent in cheating

1- No electronic devices of any kind allowed in. It really isn't that hard to write something down on paper

2-No non players/directors in the tournament room.

A third possible step would be to run radio wave interference inside the room to stop any reception coming in to hidden devices.

I also always thought it would be cool to have tournament boards that kept track of the moves on a display and could produce a print out (or e-mail) so people didn't have to waste time recording moves and even blitz tournaments could all have their moves recorded easily. That same board could even have engines in it which tracked the game and game an instant review of how close to an engine game it was.

I like that this article tried to act like it was a shock because the software was "hack proof". At least later they mentioned the more obvious conclusion, he simply turned off that software and turned on Fritz.

An even more foolproof system might just be that everyone has to record moves on paper and play naked. Good luck hiding devices that you can get information from now.

I also believe we will have opening themes with 960 at some point as well and they will get deeper over time. Instead of exact setups it would be more like "when you have a bishop knight bishop setup the plan will be...". I'm sure hundreds of years ago some guy was like "Well people will never memorize chess openings, there are too many possibilities" just as people say with 960 now.

Surest way to stop cheating: switch the black and white bishops. Players will be too confused to cheat. Yes.

Device which was approved, or that was approved? 

No, you'd use cabled internet and a cable to the TVs, nothing needs to go through the air for either of those options

Exactly right.

And also, at the very top level of chess getting a single move right in a pivitol position may be enough of an advantage to win. You would not be able to catch this via statistical analysis.

How do you think chess.com currently does it?

I'd guess they err on the side of caution and only catch the relatively blatant cheaters

so why cant we play 30 minutes Fischer games

would be cool if chess.com implemented FIscher chess 

Here y'go sacking3:

http://www.chessvariants.org/d.betza/chessvar/16x16.html

You're going to need to take down that website, seek out those responsible for this heresy and bring them to justice...