FM Borislav Ivanov Disqualified

Greetings human.

"Ready for a game Mr.Ivanov ?"

Lests see how  he would play a military general, with his gun on the table and tapping it every time he moves.

I think many of us are aware of it. It isn't relevant to the discussion though.

Could you post where you found your information? I'd like to judge for myself on how thorough the security measures were.

It isn't possible to think like a computer, so a simpler theory is that he cheated.

Tapping is no joke. But it must be done efficiently. Which means using both the left and right foot big toe. Binary rather than unary. Each of file and rank takes 3 bits. Which is 3 taps, either with left or right toe. Let's say the opponent moved g7-g6. g is on the right half of the board, so first tap is right. g is still on the right half of that right half, so another right tap. And finally, since g is left of h, a left tap. When the computer receives 3 taps in quick enough succession it acknowledges. It could send feedback to the left foot to acknowledge registering a file, and right foot to acknowledge a rank. For ranks, left toe would mean lower half; right is upper half. He could move his right foot in front of his left to help remember. After receiving g7 the computer could acknowledge not only the square, but also that it only needs a rank to complete the move. So he then taps right-left-right for 6 (or there could be a custom encoding for pawn moves, which generally only need 2 bits for target square). After another second or so of thought, the computer would relay its reply in the same manner, repeating if necessary until the human acknowledges in some way. I think with practice, this is both reliable and fast. 3 taps should take no more than a second. Still, in the worst case, we're looking at a total of 9 seconds. Maybe the quoted 5-7 seconds was estimated on the optimistic side?

Question: could he have the computer strapped to his ankle? What's the smallest (and flattest) piece of hardware that can run Houdini? Could it be an Intel-based smartphone?

johntromp: It's interesting because one of the things dificult to understand in this case is the blunder against Jovanic. I can't see why a simple transmiter/receiver would have failed after a period of time, even a long one. And I don't think he could have sent a bad White move by mistake, because no move from White could have made Blacks play Bd6 imo.(maybe I'm wrong ?)

But if he was using a smartphone calculating every single move, it could  have gone out of battery, after move 114...

The move position encoding could be done more efficiently too. Imagine that there are 2 devices in each shoe that can register a tap and give a tap back (probably embedded within the soles, to avoid detection), one under big toe, one under little toe. All the ranks can be represented by one of LeftLittle (LL), LeftBig (LB), RL, RB or LL-RL (simultaneously), LL-RB, LB-RL, LB-RB. It's not at all difficult to press either the little or big toe of one foot or two feet, and you could easily learn those patterns so you could enter a rank and file in half a second. Likewise, when you get the result back, it's just a matter of interpreting the same pattern. It would be easy to send a signal and get a result in the 5-7 second time frame with some practice.

The difficulty would be to evade detection if he and all his belongings were submitted to x-rays. Something tells me that hasn't happened, and no matter how much he might say he wants to clear his name, he will never do that immediately after one of his Houdini performances.

Really doesn't seem like it should be at all that difficult to pull in 5-7 seconds.

I certainly rule out the possibility of an accomplice actively involved with the move relay. Way too much overhead. But even on his own, I find the claimed 5-7 seconds a little hard to believe. I think he'll need 8-10 seconds. The estimate came from a grandmaster engrossed in a game. I wouldn't expect him to accurately time his opponent; he was probably just guessing. And it's quite possible to misjudge 8-10 seconds in a quick game where you're getting crushed to have felt like 5-7 seconds...

He doesn´t need the smallest piece of hardware that can run houdini, he could run a remote control software from his smartphone to access his home pc, and as Dubrax says, he could have run out of battery after a very long game.

Why would someone else inputting to the computer be necessary?  Obviously this information can be sent directly.

The NSA might know whether he had a cellular connection at the times of his superhuman games...

Even if it's true that a two way mirror was used, how does that prevent an accomplice that was there to see the moves without delay, and use a device to transmit the answer?

For me, the most plausible explanation is the following:

He had (has) an accomplice who follows the game and puts the moves into his computer. The easiest way to do this is either to have an accomplice among the staff of the tournament (somone who has access go all games which will then be shown on screen(s) for the audience), or to hack into such computersystem, or a hidden camera in the tournament hall that shows the moves, and that receives his accomplice.

Further, Ivanov needs to have a very small ear device (loudspeaker), not visible for the people in the hall, so that he will receive the answers of Houdini by his accomplice.

All doable with non-expensive equipment, except perhaps the ear-device.

Anyway, I like the idea of some secret service which wants to test new equipment, and perhaps also the reaction of the chess community.

As you saw in this thread, the ear-device costs US$195, so it´s not really expensive. I´ve seen another one that make a coin looks big, but it was $500.

I agree with the possibility that he used an ear device. If a hand scanner was used, did they bother with checking his head, or only parts of the body that weren't visible and suspected of possibly hiding something. And did they wave it over his shoes?

I'm just curious, If Borislav Ivanov claimed that he beat Houdini and Rybka 10-0 can't FIDE just make him play them again and he can do it again?

Nothing will change, He can always say "I had a bad day today concentrating under this stressful testing conditions".

Just as people claiming psychic powers, can´t made this powers work in lab conditions, and as an explanation they say: "the spirits don´t want to be tested, my powers don´t work like that".