Official statement by Anna Rudolf
Here is an official statemet by Anna Rudolf that she sent to the Chessdom.com team an hour ago:
Since the article about my story from the Vandoeuvre Open appeared on Chessdom, I’ve received lots of feedback. Short messages from chess player acquaintances, but also supporting comments on many blogs and sites, written by people who had not even known me before. I’m thankful to all of them, it was great to see how many people support me and judge the behaviour of the accusers.
Concerning this behaviour, I totally agree with Mr Bauer that it was somewhat understandable — if they had really thought I was cheating. But I don’t understand why did they keep on accusing me and why did they make a complaint to the arbiter about me right before the last game, if my games had been checked after Round 4 and they had not shown any “too often matching with the engine”. Saying that I am younger, female, and also “low rated” can’t make an evidence for cheating, I think.
And for the ones who don’t understand how did I “learn to play chess in 2 months”, I would like to say that yes, I did lose games to players rated 2000 and I did lose lots of rating points on the World Junior Championship of 2007. That was the worst tournament of my life so far. But they could have a look at other tournaments, for example the same World Championship but from 2006 (5-8th place) or the European Women Championship of 2007 (double WGM-norm).
When my Federation (the Hungarian Chess Federation) got to know about the story from Chessdom.com, they became quite shocked and immediately contacted me. They promised me overall support and they themselves are going to make a complaint to the FIDE Ethics Commision.
The chief arbiter Eric Delmotte
The official statement by Anna Rudolf has not been the only reaction of the day. The chief arbiter of the competition Mr. Eric Delmotte shared:
Anna was playing a very good tournament and she is a very good player. She is a player that moves a lot during her game but there are a lot of players that do this. Cedric Paci asked me to come to discuss an issue with GM Vladimir Lazarev, who told me that some players have some doubts about Anna’s performance. He asked me to have a look at her and that is what we did with my colleague. But at no moment we saw anything suspicious in her moves. We tried also to analyse her games with some strong players and a computer and nobody after this analysis told me that he had a doubt.
The Latvian players have the right to expose some doubts, but they do not have right to act as they did in the last round by accusating her directly just before the game without any proof and after we dealt with it. Everybody must do everything to avoid cheating paranoya because this is not good for the “climate” of the tournaments.
http://reports.chessdom.com/anna-rudolf-case-fide
The next Susan Polgar! In the making.
If a player or group of players accuse an opponent of “cheating,” then they should either have concrete evidence or should be punished for making accusations of cheating.
Why? Because once a player accuses another of “cheating,” who is to say that they aren’t using this as a psychological weapon to make their opponent lose their concentration?
You can accuse anyone of “cheating.” But, the rules should be changed to state that when you bring such an accusation, then you’d better be ready to prove it or you will be punished for bringing false allegations.
It’s illegal to file a false police report. Why not make it illegal in the chess world to make unsubstantiated “cheating” allegations?
I think many sore-losers accuse their opponents of “cheating” just to exact revenge, ruin their name, or attempt to hurt them psychologically so they will not play 100%.
This isn’t right.
If you accuse someone of cheating and then are proven that your allegation is wrong, then you should be punished for bringing false charges against an opponent.
Many players are now using the “cheating excuse” as a psychological ploy to throw hurt the opponents concentration.
If someone is really caught cheating, then ban them for life. If they are accused, then proved the allegation is absolutely false, then the person who originally made the accusation should be punished…banned for a few years.
Do this and all this “cheating” nonsense will stop.
Players should not directly accuse each other of cheating. If they do they should be punished with a match loss for poor sportsmanship. They should consult with the arbiter if they are concerned about cheating and let the arbiter deal with it indirectly. The degree of “proof” is irrelevant in this process. At no time should players, managers, or whoever, directly confront other players, managers, or whoever about cheating. That is the reason the arbiter exists.
In a side note – PLEASE POST MORE CHESS BANTER MISS STRATEGY!
Go Anna!!!
You are representing Women’s chess for all women around the world!
Congratulations!
The cheating accusations aren’t the best way to hit on women 🙂
ANNA RUDOLF FTW!!!
“Amen” to commenter #2, with some particulars:
() The “concrete evidence” of “too often matching with the engine” should be log files with analysis clipped from runs of the engine(s) in question. I won’t say that the format of log files on my site has to be followed exactly—indeed I’m still sifting out five (5!) different testing methodologies—but the evidence has to meet the standards of science lab reports as taught in high school.
() An allegation of “too much matching” that doesn’t meet this particular definition of “substantiated” shall not be entertained, full stop. (This was a main message for USCF TDs in a talk I gave at the US Open.)
Caveats:
() “the engine” is not well defined.
() What constitutes a “match” is not simple: Engines often change their minds at different ply depths. Timing data needs to be given with the runs, or inferred from search depth, processor speed, other hardware.
() The mathematical definition of “too much matching” is a nontrivial problem by itself.
Alas it’s not a “push-button” matter, and proper tests may require taking the timeframe of the actual game, using software and hardware not everyone owns. But the moral I draw from events in this case is that even so, the initial burden of evidence needs to be on the accuser, not the accused and not the TD.
Danailov started this by throwing off Kramnik from game 5. It worked for Topalov and Danailov and now it worked against Anna.
I do not like Topalov because of this and I will support Anna to the ends of the earth.
Go Anna Go
The chess world Knows you are honest. These cheats will never win in the long run. FIDE has to put a stop to this by crushing these guys real good.
It is not surprising that there are accusations of cheating in an OTB tournament. There have been some well documented cases (a quick search through a site like Chessbase will bring up the info) but how often does it actually occur among ranked players? Probably not as often as the paranoid would think. Right now everyone is focused on using computers to analyze moves looking for patterns of play as a hint of cheating. Ironically the whole Danilov-Topalov-Kramnik affair probably brought this to the forefront, yet among GMs it is arguable especially at the hightest level that they are the least susceptible to cheating in this manner. As a group they know each other and interact with each other in other chessic ways outside of the tournament or match game. They do post mortems and have played quick games in the skittles room or have seen each other play at team tourneys and the olympiads.
Though not perfectly associated with strength ability at speed and in analysis often correlate with overall playing ability. Granted the evidence which supports this idea comes mostly from the super GM level – where even players who didn’t like blitz showed that they could play quickly with great accuracy and depth (Fischer, Korchnoi, and Karpov are among those that come to mind immediately). When you read a very strong player’s (“average” GM)impression of the top group of GMs (like in recent interviews given by Lautier about working with Kramnik or Heine Nielsen working with Anand) they almost all universally report that the top players see so many lines of play, sort through them and winnow down to a few key lines – but in the process show that they have considered whole families of lines which the average GM didn’t even imagine.
That is why in such a situation it may be simple to see whether a player really is as good as they seem. Do they play speed well? Can they explain and analyze?
It is possibly to have a great tournament and play exceptional chess at any level, and every once in a while it happens and someone has a great tournament. I would think that it is possible that a player’s moves might mimic an engine, also, if they are seeing the board well and making good moves. So if a player’s moves are close to an engine’s moves, but there is no evidence that the player has used an engine, that also should not be a reason to say a player was a cheat.
Players who yell “cheater” without proof should have their game forfeited and be thrown out of the tournament.