Ivanov speaks out!

Yah, I just bought one on ebay. Its the Ivanov-2.0, and it comes with a free install of Houdini.

It's hard enough to cheat using the best line a computer can spew out. In order to cheat using a second-best line that still wins, you would need someone on the other end feeding those moves. It's just too complex to try to cheat in a "subtle" manner. And if you only cheat for a few moves, you may improve your performance, but you won't beat too many players several levels above you. Kasparov once said that if he'd had help for only one move, he'd be much stronger. The thing is, it's impossible to know which one move would have made a difference beforehand.

For now, I think it's difficult enough to cheat, let alone be subtle about it.

Read the last five pages and laughed until I couldn't breathe, mostly because you're obviously being trolled by rusconi.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/why-ivanov-is-only-97th-at-the-bulgarian-open

LOL...the fact is that even after the mountain of "evidence",  some people still believed that Lance Dopestrong was innocent. A famous legal quote says, "Not guilty is not the same as innocent." What it means is that insufficent evidence was presented to find you guilty...but you could have indeed commited the crime.

just like the O.J. Simpson thing.

Let's say we have a 1200 player who decides to play in a regional master tournament with a big prize pot. Let's say in this tournament, which is 2 weeks after his previous tournament, he consistently beats almost all the masters. Analysis shows that his style of play completely changed in 2 weeks, and that it matched a computer's moves and style of play. Analysis also shows that after this player was searched, his play temporarily changed, and he lost that game.

Rusconi:
If USCF allows this guy to play in the next tournament, should we just declare him a genius, and forget about it? After all, nothing was found in his pockets, and the ones who suspected him of cheating have not pooled together a scientific peer-review documentation finding 100% proof of cheats.

He is a troll. No doubt about it. My gosh, I am laughing so hard over here.

I dunno, don't underestimate someone's ability to completely miss the point.

That said, I've made a few replies, and I'm done.

Yes, I find it startling too. But I have an explanation.

IMHO, Ivanov is a victim of his own cognitive bias as some cheating online players and CC centaurs are. While he played in Zadar and cheated, he sat behind chessboard and before receiving outside Houdini advice, he calculated and thought himself about his move just in case something went wrong with communication. It happened sometimes Houdini confirmed his own candidate move and recommended it and he actually made it. Actually it happenned in about 40%-50% cases. But inside Ivanov's mind these numbers became greatly exaggerated, he got the feeling he understood Houdini and Houdini agreed with him nearly always, and he came to conclusion he was great player himself able to produce nearly-Houdini play performance without Houdini.

In his more recent tournament he didn't cheat, because he knew he was watched, maybe his accomplice didn't want to continue as well, and he was foolishly confident about his superior chess skills. He thought he would prove them even without computer help.

That's a very interesting explanation, Polar_Bear. One problem though is that I would expect him to have tested the system beforehand in private, and I would expect him to be aware of top-3 style analyses of games. So while I think your explanation would work well if he were actually using his system for the first time in the tournament, I think if he had practiced with it first in private (and done any research at all on cheating analysis), he would know that despite how often it seems he is finding Houdini's best move, matching close to 100% is just too suspicious.

Why do you keep droning on about lynching?  Do you know what that word means?  Claimin' some dude cheated in a chess tournament is a far cry from lynching.

Go outside, have a look around, maybe that will cheer you up.

could Ivanov have been a target of Bobby Fischer's ghost ?

stay tuned!

Ivanov played too many games against Houdini and it took over his brain!!! No computers involved... Q.E.D.

I guess it is staticically possible that he did not cheat...but was rather possessed by Bobby Fischer's ghost, as suggested...

Ivanov bothered only to hide the communicating device if searched, he didn't think analysis could be used as main piece of evidence. Plus he came to conclusion he understands the game of chess as Houdini he used. Maybe he does, but he doesn't possess the brute force calculation power.

http://www.chess.com/blog/Jamalov/zadar-zadar-zadar

the irony  is, if he had played first weaker players and then cheated a little, and then cheated more and more as the opponents got stronger, then everyone probably would call him a GM now.

what a flute!

they are just upset i think

trumpeting: have you ever heard a conspiracy theory or a pseudoscience idea that you didn't find believable?