The Crown Game Affair
January 13, 2013
by KWRegan
What constitutes evidence of cheating?
Faye Dunaway is an Academy Award-winning actress who co-starred with the late Steve McQueen in the 1968 movie “The Thomas Crown Affair.” She plays a freelance insurance fraud investigator, Vicki Anderson, who believes that millionaire playboy Thomas Crown is guilty of instigating a $2.6 million bank heist, but falls in love with him anyway. The most famous scene in the movie shows her both defeating and seducing Crown in a game of chess.
Today I write about the difficulty of detecting fraud at chess, and the role of statistical evidence.
The New York Times this morning joins several chess media outlets coveringthe allegations against a Bulgarian player who was searched during a tournament in Croatia last month. When we mentioned this case in our “Predictions and Principles” post earlier this month, I had the issue of principles regarding statistical evidence high in my mind, and this is reflected in my exemplar of a formal report. It accompanies a cover letter to theAssociation of Chess Professionals, raising the issue of what do you do when there is no physical or observational evidence but the statistical evidence is strong, and who should have oversight of standards and procedures for statistical tests.
Dunaway also had a small role in the 1999 remake, in which Crown again escapes uncaught but with a different endgame. Crown is played by Pierce Brosnan of James Bond fame. There is a James Bond quality to current speculation about possible cheating methods, from embedded chips to special reflective glasses. They are among items considered at the end of this 70-minute video by Bulgarian master Valeri Lilov, which was also covered by ChessBase.com. But none of this speculation is accompanied by any hard evidence. The real action may be not with the kind of gadgeteers to interact with M or Q or even Miss Moneypenny, but rather the actuaries down below who track the numbers.
Arbiter By Numbers
Cheating and gamesmanship at chess are nothing new—only the possible sources of illegal information during games have changed from ‘animal’ and ‘vegetable’ to ‘mineral.’ The following lyrics from the “Arbiter’s Song” in the 1986 musical “Chess”come from actual incidents at championship matches before then.
Full article here.
Anyone who cheats should be banned for life.
Outright cheating, where a player receives moves from a computer is easier to detect. However, a computer can be used to alert a player to an inaccuracy by an opponent much more easily. The helper need only make a gesture or change something in the environment.