White knights catch French grandmasters cheating by text
By John Lichfield in Paris
Friday, 25 March 2011
The tranquil world of international chess has been thrown into uproar by accusations of intricate “cheating by text message” against three senior French players.
Two grandmasters and an international master have been found guilty by their own national organisation of “violating sporting ethics” at the Chess Olympiad – world team championships – in Khanty-Mansiysk Siberia in September.
The trio, who deny the charges, were accused of devising an elaborate scheme – using text messages and choreographed movements around the competition hall – to convey advice from a computer programme while matches were in progress.
One of the suspect games occurred in a match between England and France, in which the young French international grandmaster, Sébastien Feller, 19, beat David Howell, then also 19, the youngest chess grandmaster in the UK. Another occurred in a match between France and Georgia.
Two of the accused men, Mr Feller and Cyril Marzolo, 32, have been suspended from competition for two years. The third, the team captain Arnaud Hauchard, 39, – accused of conveying pre-arranged codes for moves by his own movements between tables – has been removed from his position. All three men deny the allegations, which seem certain to end in the courts.
This is the first time that formal accusations of cheating of this kind have surfaced in international chess. “There have often been suspicions but there has never before been such clear evidence of cheating at the highest level,” said Laurent Verat, director general of the Fédération Française des Echecs.
Mr Verat said: “Even Garry Kasparov (the former world champion) has rung me about it. He is astounded.”
The affair has split the country’s best players down the middle – into the allegedly dishonest and, inevitably, black and the outraged, pure whites. Three other members of the team at the Olympiad – Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Laurent Fressinet and Romain Edouard – have given public backing to the allegations against their team-mates.
The three accused men claim they are the victims of a conspiracy and internal team “jealousies”.
Mr Marzolo was not in the team at the Olympiad. It is alleged he followed games on the internet from Nancy in eastern France. According to evidence given to the federation’s disciplinary committee he fed the moves into Firebird, a powerful chess computer program.
Full article here.
Another overzealous federation politicians going after innocent kids.
Very sad indeed. One can imagine how many other GM’s? IM’s? and other chess players resort to cheating and don’t get caught. But this is an era without conscience. We get airline pilots who cheat in their exams,politicians who cheat every which way etc etc. Long live the dedicated and honest few like WC Vishy Anand. No wonder Anand does not play in the Olympiad. Why should he risk his reputation against a bunch of cheats? Imagine the headlines ” Feller destroys WC Anand!”
“Another overzealous federation politicians going after innocent kids.”
If you’re going to make a statement like that I suggest you back it up with some evidence or reasoning.
In the future they will have to ban people from entering/leaving the halls, all computer equipment, and jam as many communication frequencies as possible.
Honestly, it’s too easy to cheat the way it is. It doesn’t take a Houdini to come up with some of these schemes… if I wanted to cheat on a professional level I might put a small computer in my shoe and figure out some way to transmit and receive moves. The length of practice time or cost for this wouldn’t be an issue.