Sad case of high school chess cheating

My take on this is a bit more global. The whole growth on chess cheating...and mind you these are only the ones caught, is a reflection of the era we live in. For whatever reason, the current generation is void of any sense of morality, and even worship cheaters. The villain is more popular than the hero in movies now, bullying is alive and well, and we are even willing to forgive Lance Armstrong (the evidence will be revealed shortly)...it really is a strange world we find ourselves in when we see the bad guys as heroes...

Says the guy with the Joker as his avatar...

Well, what if it's some alien program in a programming language that'd take us 100 years to understand?  Sure, we could hack it in 100 years, but then it'd be Alien Chess 100.2...

Wow.  Do you realize that there have been loved villians for a long time? There have always been outlaw heros.  There have been gangster films for several generations that have had characters that were admired, such as Scarface and Godfather, as well as black and white movies.  Scarface, Godfather, or Star Wars (Darth Vader is a common favorite) are from before this generation's time.  People have even admired real gangsters from a long time, like Jesse James and Bonnie and Clyde.

In literature, the one that pops to mind is the Count of Monte Cristo in which the main character spends decades plotting and exacting his revenge.  Sure, the count's out for justice, but this is still vigilante justice that involves ruining the lives of several people, including the death of one.  People have also admired Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes.  Robin Hood was a theif who freely kills to "liberate" tax money!  How about Don Juan?  Let's not forget comic book characters (i.e. Joker, i.e. your avatar.)

Some people consider Napoleon a tyrant while some consider him to be one of the greatest men in history.  Caesar & Alexander were brutal, took slaves, and murdered.  Of course, this stuff could be said about most leaders from Alexander clear to Queen Victoria ("Colonized" many places.)

You have to be realistic and realize that people have admired villians throughout human history and looking down on the present generation for it is arrogance and/or ignorance.

Oh, I forgot to mention that bullying and cheating have been around since early man first walked the face of the earth.  Even animals bully each other.

Oh man, I forgot about him.

I think him showing up to another tournament and getting every tiny gesture scrutinized like a ex-con released from prison is punishment enough.  I wonder if publicly shamed cheaters ever gets a second chance to succeed ... at any sport, not just chess?

Of course, boxing: Antonio Margarito, Roy Jones, James Toney. Athletics: Dwain Chambers, Justin Gatlin. Cycling: Alberto Contador etc...

I'll stick with pencil and paper! Great Article. Thank you for posting it!

If he was thoughtful enough to cheat like this, then he should receive a life ban. Also, the fact that he knew that cheating was punishable by such a ban also justifies his punishment. 

If he hadn't been caught, then he would have continued cheating. 

This is a nation (and world) where political leaders set examples by lying as a matter of normal discourse. Cheating at chess merely seems ... par.

"O tempola, o moles!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_tempora_o_mores!

"O tempora! O mores!" but said by an African pirate who couldn't speak "r" correctly ( Asterix comic )

FirebrandX brings up an excellent point. Why didn't someone notice his unbelievable ratings rise. Clark Smiley made a ratings jump that was unheard of. Teaching chess full time, I notice any sudden increase in my student's rating and carefully examine their games for the last three to six months. I'm not looking for cheating but "why" they've done so well? I'm looking for the underlying reason for their success so I can share it with my other students. All of my students must use paper and a writing implement to record their games rather than electronic devices. Why? It has nothing to do with cheating. Using a sheet of paper and a pencil/pen ensures that the game is recorded should there be a power outage or mechanical issue related to the recording device. IM pfren is correct! FIDE has taken care of these potential problems. Now it's time for the rest of the tournament world to catch up.

Let's make it happen!

Funnily enough, I am distantly involved in this situation.

It seems that a former student played this person and lost to them and sent me a game to evaluate it. (I did not spend a lot of time on it, however.) I was complacent and felt sure that USCF would have taken all the measures to prevent such a ruse.

I wrote USCF and told this and asked that the offender be banned for life, his rating went up around 500+ points (or more) in mid-2011, which seems to coincide with the time that he began using his PDA to record chess games. (I would say that it is pretty much an open-and-shut case.)

I also agree with IM Pfren ... ALL electronic devices must be banned during a chess game ... for the good of chess.

Hear hear!

This seems such an obvious thing I was amazed to find that even FIDE has allowed the use of MonRoi devices in some events. This must stop.

But FIDE is doing NADA, ZERO, NOTHING about cheating. Ivanov, just the last case, is playing the Bulgarian open. And I don't know if they banned this cheater. So it seems cheaters are right to find ways to win using computers, if the Federations are doing nothing about it.

I like how the mother thinks that the 16 year old is a "little kid" who did not know any better. Really?

I didn't go to a tournament until I was 20+ and so it was never a problem to record a complete and correct game... so if you're saying that's an issue for kids I'll just have to take your word for it.  I suspect ones that go to tournaments often enough (like yourself) would be able to take score though... it's really not that hard.

But yes, that's one annoying thing about it.  What if you enter the move wrong?  Then you have to tap tap tap (i.e. deniability when cheating by analysing a tactic just once per game lets say). 

By the way the TD needs a copy of the game... do you copy the moves afterwards and turn in a score sheet?

Anyway it doesn't bother me when my opponent has one... I just tend to think of them as completely unnecessary.  In the future it'd be nice if the board did it all for us (kind of like GM games) ... except even GMs keep score heh.  They really don't need to with their games being everywhere on the internet before they even leave the playing hall.

I don't know much about computers, but people who are computer savvy have said it is quite easy to rig a monroi device, have it give its recommendation and if there's a TD around, to revert back to its regular mode without anyone being the wiser, including the opponent. 

Why introduce this into the tournament hall at all?  The complaint that some 8 yr old kid can't write his moves and therefore needs an engine to write for him just doesn't make sense to me. My 8 yr old students learn to write the moves. It's not hard to teach them that much.