What do we Know About borislav Ivanov?

How many of you think he is really a cheater? Has any allegations been proved yet? 

He soared from anonymity to notoriety in the chess world in a series of well-calculated moves, beating a slew of Grand Masters before his 25th birthday. But now a Bulgarian chess champion has left opponents enraged – and amateurs envious – following allegations he had been cheating the whole time.

Dubbed the "James Bond of chess" by an excitable Bulgarian press pack, Borislav Ivanov has won top prizes in chess competitions across the continent from Croatia and Spain. But a number of grandmasters – those awarded the game's highest title – are now refusing to sit across the chess board from him.

Ivanov, who strongly denies cheating, was ejected from the Navalmoral de la Mata tournament in western Spain earlier this month after players claimed he had used devices hidden under his shirt and inside his shoes to enhance his chess-playing skills.

In a series of increasingly bizarre scenes, officials examined Ivanov's shoes at the end of the tournament's fourth round because it was "widely remarked that a hidden device could be placed inside his footwear". Finding nothing, they also used a mobile app to scan for hidden metal, but again nothing was found that, as the tournament's organisers said, could "imply the existence of a hidden device inside his footwear".

Then, at the same tournament, competitor Andres Holgado Maestre spotted a "suspicious bump" under Mr Ivanov's shirt, officials said. He later grabbed the bump and claimed "he could touch an oblong object, similar to an MP3 player, attached to Mr Ivanov's body".

After a third incident in which Ivanov was strip searched and officials spotted "a kind of strap crossing his chest", the Bulgarian left the competition – voluntarily. When asked in a recent interview with the website Chess Base how he reacted to the allegations, Ivanov said: "At first I wasn't surprised about the speculations but suddenly they turned very ridiculous. Some people accused me of using technical equipment that only Nasa has. I even heard that I had had my own satellite that transmitted moves during the games."

Commenting on his strip search, Ivanov added: "Although they checked my pockets very slowly and my jacket, and after they found nothing... maybe they were a bit disappointed, [because] they were 100 per cent sure I was cheating and of course that's a total lie. I'm not a genius, nor a cheat, but just a normal boy that wants to have fun playing chess."

Experts say that cheating in chess is not common but not unknown, and a recent spate of alleged incidents have prompted calls for the game's governing body to launch more thorough checks on players.

Once considered pure folly, attempting to cheat at chess in tournaments has become more widespread than ever, as the relevant cheap technology becomes readily available. The most popular technique is to download chess engines, which use data from previous world famous games to help calculate the player's best possible moves.

James Pratt, editor of the world's oldest chess journal, British Chess Magazine, said: "Boris Ivanov is not a well-known name in the chess world, nor is he even now a lovable anti-hero. Where cheating is concerned, chess is small beer; there aren't many big prizes, not really. Thus exposed as he now is, Ivanov has little more than shame to claim as his award. In one form or another, the problem is not new to the 64 squares."

While the elite players are refusing to engage Ivanov in battle, chess amateurs have welcomed him as a cult hero. Dozens of chess forum threads are now devoted to analysing his games and investigating his tactics. In one thread, titled "Cheating is our religion and Ivanov is our god", fans rallied around the Bulgarian.

"I'm officially an Ivanov worshipper from now on. I don't understand all the hate that he gets. You people ought to love him. He is a true legend. [He is] the man who never got caught," one user wrote on the chess.com forum. "I support Ivanov!" another user roared. "I hope he is out from this issue fast! We all know he didn't cheat."

The game's governing body, Fédération internationale des échecs, said in a statement that it was "aware of the damage caused by this unfortunate incident" and was "now preparing a whole system of measures against all kinds of cheating".

The Bulgarian Chess Federation said Ivanov has been excluded from its membership.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/how-do-you-cheat-at-chess-young-borislav-ivanov-seems-to-know-9020186.html

I wonder how the hell was he never caught cheating at such big tournaments if he ever did? has technology advanced so much that it is so difficult to catch cheats at OTB also? 

It's a shame there was a witch hunt to convict him without any evidence.  Now, his budding chess career destroyed, he has no choice but to resort to forging documents to make a living.  

The statistical evidence is rock-solid.  His games were much more engine-like than Carlsen at his best.  Anyone can check his games from those tournaments.

He also chose to forfeit rather than remove his shoes on one occasion, and on another occasion when he was searched they found an electronic device; he refused to allow them to examine it, even knowing it would mean removing him from the tournament.

There's not really any doubt here.

How can you cheat by having a device in your shoe? 

I mean, how would that work? 

I thought that it was really funny, but not surprising, that that happened.

Not sure.  Might have vibrated in Morse code or something.  The one game where they cut the live broadcast he played much worse, so he probably had an accomplice watching the games online and communicating with him somehow to suggest moves.

People at that tournament had already noticed that he was walking funny, as if he was trying to avoid putting weight on something in his shoe.

Valeri Lilov also had a really good analysis - he showed that there were several non-human, and really bad moves played by Ivanov, which were likely the result of him misinterpreting the signals of the device he was using.

So, that ugly old anti-Bulgarian hobby horse rears its head yet again.

Maybe he's so advanced that his normal chess seems impossible to us normals?

Maybe his mom was a Cray?

I'm sure he'll be vindicated someday and we'll find that his tomb is empty.

Or not.

Now that was few years ago and electronics improved since then at least 2 fold, I wonder what precaution tournament organisers are taking into consideration right now.

All players should play naked from now on

Don't get me wrong, but I'd still have ease to mount some cheating accessory ( : 

Do you remember the Joker having a tele buried in his stomach? Not hard to imagine Borislav swallowing something smaller.

The think is that think size of hand-watch is full grown pc with powerful enough cpu for blitz on master level, if you crack method of communicating with is you can put it whenever you want.  

Play naked??? Now that might distract me if I was playing a young lady. Also shoes can be used for a lot of things....we have to take our shoes off at the airport now because of the "shoe bomber".