FM Borislav Ivanov Disqualified

 Herr Gottlieb, that is one thorough list of assumptions...

  What the issue here is what is the right way of doing things. 

Now, perhaps the way the Bulgurians did it is perfectly ok. But that doesn't stop anyone from asking questions. It is perfectly ok to say that it could have been handled more appropriately, perhaps by the standards of the International Community. 

By all means the Bulgurians are free to do what they want.

So maybe I am misinformed and I haven't read the official statement of the Bulgarian Chess Federation: perhaps they did consult a lawyer asking if they have the right to ban someone based on a few games.

However, it would be mob justice, if they simply complied to the complaints of the GMs. There has to be a due process. 

I don't know about point jumps, whether anyone who performs better is a cheater.

 I still think they just succumbed to the pressure.

maybe just a hasty decision...it depends on how much money Ivanov has and if he can afford a lawyer. It is tough to single handedly to take on an Institution. People just avoid that kind of prolonged scrutiny.  Silence is not always a sign of guilt.

Has anybody checked him for a bluetooth device  --- i.e. such as the one indicated here:

http://www.gizmag.com/brickhouse-security-invisible-bluetooth-earpiece/13485/

For no good reason this reminds me of the cycling scandal last year.  Years of denial and winning until technology caught up with the cheaters.

I think in the end over the board chess will find a way to handle this.  We have the tech already... we can block and jam most forms of comms.  That may be the answer, rather than trying to detect something.  Of course you have to handle old-school stuff too, so spectation would have to be via camera only or someone in the crowd could be feeding a cheater.  But a totally jammed and electronically isolated room with only 2 or 3 moderators and the 2 players.... is not hard to rig up. 

jonnin, it's impossible to have one arbiter per player in small tournaments.

Sooner or later, metal detectors/jammers/any other stuff will become indispensible  at high level, and will be there. But the rank-and-file, what ca they do ? Ivanov is not competing in top tournaments either.

electronic jamming (at least for cell phones) i think is illegal in the US, the basis for the law is for reasons pertaining to medical practice.

A Faraday cage would block all devices without needing a jammer.  I don't know how practical it would be to have non world class events like this though.

Not very practical... You know many rooms where the walls are in copper ?

A good old metal detector (airoport-like) at the entrance is probably less expensive.

One could say that he's finally achieved his immoral game.

What's the "immortal" equivalent for "notorious?"  :)

Yeah, that's a more practical solution.

That or rent out one of those chambers where they test sensitive electronic equipment... not so practical I know :p

Borislav Ivanov was suspected for cheating 2012.on international open tournament in Croatia, ''Zadar Open''. His score was 6 afther 9 round and he achived GM norm.On tournament was participate 36 players:

-16 grand masters

-6 international masters

-10 fide masters

Who is Borislav Ivanov?

Chess player and programmer from Bulgaria.26 years old

On Zadar Open 2012 he was fighting for 1st place even he was the worst rated player.During the tournament group of players assumed Ivanovov for cheating. Arbiter and some other people tried to find anything what would proved Ivanov is cheater! They didnt find nothing.

He didnt talk with nobody,didnt have any electronic things...in last game,organizators  have given him other pencil.He won in last game against GM Ivan Saric.

Croatian Grand Master Zlatko Klaric,said:''He is just chess programmer-the best example is game against GM Jovanovic when all 115 moves were chosed by computer too and thats not possible for people.''

That's a joke, right?  RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) is so passé.  I remember when engineers from Athlon presented to an engineering team I was on several years ago and they pointed out that modern CPUs and pipelining and optimization made the RISC model obsolete.  In other words,  it doesn't matter if you have a fairly robust set of CPU mnuemonics and and instructions (e.g. the opposite of RISC), because things are so fast, flexible and threaded now that it's all a wash. 

In other words, that's a really old device, isn't it?

Ivanov has 2 kind of games:

* Flawless games with perfect tactics

* 1900~ level games

In the flawless games he has around 98%-99% match with Houdini.

If I remember correctly in that studies of comparisons of World Champions and Programs, Capablanca and Carlsen had around 93% of match.

So Ivanov would be even better than the greatest in the history of chess, do you think that´s possible or Ivanov would be just cheating?

An additional thing from GM Bojkov:

"You probably do not know that before the open Bulgarian championship in Plovdiv this February the arbiter (IA Rumen Angelov) showed at the opening ceremony a gadget and stated that he has the right to check anyone during the event. This gadget was basically nothing, but for one or another reason Ivanov's performance there was around 1800-1900."

that's a strange statistic regardless of your definition of match.  at wc level, approx. 40% top 1 choice and 57% top 3 choices [human move correlation with selection of top engines] although it's been a while since i've looked at the data.

Wow, that is rich coming from someone who used to claim they never used engines on ICCF, but whose ICCF rating is 600 points higher than their over the board rating.  Lately yes you've been "admitting" to playing centaur chess, but the damage is done, anybody can go back and find content of yours where you insisted you were not using an engine during ICCF play.

FIDE needs to come up with anti-cheating methods that will exonerate Magnus Carlsen but catch the cheats. Ivanov isn't guilty of playing well, he's guilty of plagiarizing Houdini or a similar engine. In one of his Zadar games, he played the engine's first choice moves even when a human would have found better moves!

It seems that the fact that Ivanov played inconsistently is used as clear evidence of his cheating. If he had played consistently that also would have been used as clear evidence of his cheating. 

The Bulgarian Chess Federation's decision feels like a lynching. Everyone says Ivanov must be guilty, so we're going to ban him. And yes, lynch mobs do sometimes get the right guy, but there should be a process in place before a person is banned that doesn't involve angry mobs.

dr who needs to start turning up with his sonic screwdriver to detect electronic devices.

Agreed, there should be a process. Hopefully, one will be introduced to combat this kind of event, which, while still very rare nowadays, will probably become more common in the future.

Nevertheless, anyone who claims that there is insufficient evidence of cheating is wrong. Statistical analysis, checked by human eye, is a viable method of proof of guilt.

The chances of DNA testing giving a false match is typically one in several billion. No-one doubts this as a tool that can be used to prove guilt, and sentence people to life imprisonment or death.

The probability of Ivanov playing game after game, where each move turns out to be Houdini's first choice, even when it looks bizarre, conditioned over the reasonable assumption that he is not the best chess player by far that ever lived, is at least, if not far more, unlikely, by my estimation. Add this to the fact that he played ridiculously poorly in that one tournament, plus the interpretations Lilov gives in his videos, and for me, guilt is beyond any sort of reasonable doubt. I don't see what there is to defend.