What should be done about proven chess cheaters?
What should be done about people who make false cheating accusations?
Some have suggested a 3 year ban for the first offense, 10 years for the second offense and lifetime ban for the third offense. What kind of penalties would be fair to punish the cheaters and the false accusers?
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
lifetime ban for the first offense of cheating
3 year ban for the first offense of false accusation
Lifetime ban at once!
Cheating in Chess is NOT DONE! And should be punished very hard!!
Cheaters have no respect for Chess!
Despite the recent series of cases of cheating and accusations of cheating, it seems to me that this is a very limited problem. By far the vast majority of chessplayers play fairly, and I suspect that this will continue to be the case well into the future.
As such, I think some leniency is in order. On the internet, it is commonly the case that a simple accusation amounts to proof of guilt. This, to my mind, is far too harsh for OTB play where the investment in time, money and friendship is higher. Even if a certain player is the target of repeated accusations, I feel that, absence any tangible proof of wrongdoing, that player should not be sanctioned.
That said, wherever money is on the line, there will be some temptation to cheat. Moreover, when pride is on the line (which is far more often, it seems) there will be temptation to accuse players of cheating. Therefore, this is an issue that should be addressed.
Assuming that the problem is limited, I feel the onus of proving cheating should be on the accuser. This should be done by showing a TD the exact technical means of cheating or by demonstrating the uncanny resemblance of a *series* of games to computer evaluations. It should not be the responsibility of the accused to demonstrate his or her innocence- but it should be for the accuser to demonstrate guilt. This should especially hold true for smaller, amateur, tournaments (weekend swisses) where the consequences of a false accusation are disproportionate to the benefit gleaned from cheating in the first place.
Accusations of cheating should be made “official” in some way, and a database should be kept of the accusers and the result of the accusation. Those who, as proven by the database, “cry wolf” three or more times, should be sanctioned as harshly as those who are demonstrated to be cheating.
A sanction would be loss of playing privledges, and loss of rating.
Anon said:
“If I am a footballer or athlete and accuse some of my opponents of doping usage will the sport federation punish me? No!”
eh…Yes! actually. Football is very quick to sanction those who make false accusations with a charge of “bringing the game into disrepute”. I think Jose Muirinho the Chelsea manager was called to account a short time ago for suggesting that a player from an opposing team was cheating by diving in the penalty area and looking for a penalty. Can any soccer fans confirm this?
I think it is in FIDEs best interests to stop this nonsense. Those who are caught cheating should be punished as should those who cast unsubstantiated aspersions.
Regarding the technical means of cheating, sensible, though not overly intrusive, steps should be taken to ensure that access to technology in the playing hall is limited. Of course, cell phones of any type should not be permitted in the playing hall.
I’ve often wondered why there isn’t some sort of “coat check” system for cell phones in medium sized weekend swisses, and larger tournaments. Those who are on call should be able to “check” their cell phone with a TD, who will alert the player if a call comes in.
TD’s should reserve the right to inspect, at the behest a player, any other suspicious technology brought into the playing hall (MP3 players, for instance). However, this should be limited to a single inspection- so as not to allow the inspection to become a distraction.
A 3 year ban is the maximum prescribed by the FIDE Regs. A first offender should probably get less. 6 months to a year, perhaps, depending on how egregious.
>>If I am a footballer or athlete and accuse some of my opponents of doping usage will the sport federation punish me? No! >>
Yes. They will. You bring the league into disrepute in the eyes of the public, and they will take action. Public relations is their business.
Sorry, a 3 year ban is the maximum for making public accusations, not the maximum for actually cheating.
“Why for God’s sake should FIDE regulate this?……..If I am a footballer or athlete and accuse some of my opponents of doping usage will the sport federation punish me? No!”
I disagree, false accusations can be very pernicious if left unchecked. I think most sports federations will take sanctions against an organization or player if they level baseless accusations of outright cheating against their competitors. Example: if the Chicago Bears head coach came out and said he thinks Peyton Manning is taking performance enhancing drugs, the NFL would come down on him like a ton of bricks. Such things are not to be tolerated.
A three year ban would be a little much for people who make baseless accusations. It would have to be judged on a case by case basis. The accusation may be false but there may be a lot of circumstantial evidence to support a claim of cheating.
For the confirmed cheaters:
1st offence: 1 year ban.
2nd offence: Lifetime ban. They did not learn their lesson the first time and they will continue to cheat.
I think a 2 or 3-year ban is appropriate for the first offense, lifetime for the second. I don’t know why you would allow a third chance.
I don’t think false accusers should be penalized. Otherwise, someone who has a sincere concern would be afraid to speak up. I realize that sometimes the accusers are not sincere, but I don’t think penalties against them are called for. There’s too great a risk that innocent people will be punished simply for expressing a legitimate concern that turned out to be wrong (or unprovable).
>>>>Marc Shepherd said…
I don’t think false accusers should be penalized. Otherwise, someone who has a sincere concern would be afraid to speak up. I realize that sometimes the accusers are not sincere, but I don’t think penalties against them are called for. There’s too great a risk that innocent people will be punished simply for expressing a legitimate concern that turned out to be wrong (or unprovable).
>>>>
Can’t say it more clearly than you did. Greatly grounded!
The Actual cheater, lifetime ban. The accuser 10 years and the principle of “Bringing the League in Disrepute” would be a good thing. Fighting amongst themselves over a girl, public complaints about toilet trips all would be cause for some sanctions. The NFL gets tough on players with off field misbehaviours with game suspensions and such. The NFL get’s some of the prime TV and endorsement revenue and is probably the most successful sport in the USA. They’re very jealous of their image. If the primary issue is getting sponsorships, chess is going to have to start getting some positive publicity and image.
Hold it
Hold it
Hold it
We are making an important mistake in this discussion. The problem is for public accusations of other players. Certainly quiet accusations to an official of the federation with no public knowledge should not be punished if the accusations are not proven true.
For example, if one of the chess GM that lost at San Luis thought that the winner was possibly cheating then he should be able to make a private complaint to the Fide ethics committee or whoever, in total privacy and not be punished for doing so. It is the public humiliation of the sport that brings on the problems.
Actually if sufficient private compaints come in to Fide then they should be investigating the allegations. Thus they could do so by secretly videotaping the accused as much as possible at the next tournament.
The grandmaster who is suspicious is not a police officer and a prosecuting attorney general. He is not able to collect and present full evidence. That is why he goes to Fide for assistance in the investigation and gathering of evidence.
I stongly believe that if any strong GM especially in the top group is definitely caught cheating then the only acceptable punishment is a lifetime ban from playing tournament chess. How else can we protect our game.
Now down at the lower levels the punishment needs to address the quality and degree of the evidence. If the evidence is super strong then a lifetime ban is also ok. IF the evidence is less then maybe 10 years is acceptable.
In the Indian case the evidence was not total. 10 years was a good punishment.
There is simply no room for those who cheat.
Personally I believe that cheaters will simply go to a different sport and cheat there. Cheating at card games like Poker have been historical. There are big cases of cheating in the stock and investment markets in different ways. There is cheating by store customers call shoplifting. etc. Dishonesty is rampant throughout society. People do not pay their bills for example. Some people are even bold enought to drive slowly through a stop sign or late through a green light turning red.
By the way some people were caught cheating at the card game of Bridge not too long ago. They were playing at the highest levels. They were using hand signals to send information to their partner. They got away with it for a very long time. It was very easy to do. You can read all about it in the book THE GREAT BRIDGE SCANDAL.
Synopsis: In 1965, the bridge world was rocked by an accusation of cheating at the world championships in Buenos Aires. The pair involved were Britain’s Terence Reese and Boris Schapiro, two of the worlds best players. Now, almost fifty years later, the true inside story can be told – the investigation, the accusation, and the very different results of the World Bridge Federation and British Bridge League inquiries. Alan Truscott, Bridge Editor of the New York Times since 1964, probably knows more than anyone else about the complex world of international bridge. Revised and updated, this new edition of The Great Bridge Scandal tells the full inside story of the Buenos Aires affair, in which Truscott himself played a central role.
http://bridgehands.com/Reviews/Bridge_Books/Great_Bridge_Scandal_The.htm
the very different results of the World Bridge Federation and British Bridge League inquiries.
The British said they were innocent. The World Bridge said they were guilty.
All is not so simple.
From Wikipidia
Terence Reese (28 August 1913 – 1996) was a British bridge player, regarded as one of the finest players of all time, and also as one of the most influential and acerbic of bridge writers, with a large output, including several books which remain in print as classics of bridge play. He was one of the designers of the Acol bidding system (named after the Acol Bridge Club in north London), which has become the prevailing bidding system in Britain and many parts of the world.
He was born in Epsom, and played twice for Great Britain in the Bermuda Bowl, winning in 1955, but his second appearance in 1965 was marred by accusations that he and his partner Boris Schapiro were communicating illegally, which is to say cheating. The outcome of the ensuing enquiry was not clear, and Reese wrote a book Story of an Accusation about the affair. He last played international bridge in the 1970 European Championship, but his career as a bridge writer continued unabated.
how are we gonna catch cheaters unless we make accusations. we need to investigate as many people as possible to find cheaters. if we dont then the cheaters wont get caught. if we just have the mentality that were going to hurt someones reputation so we wont try and find out if there cheating unless its blatantly obvious then we’ll never catch anyone. once most people who are investigated get cleared it will become apparent that accusations are happening to alot of players in order to catch cheats. the investigaters will be wrong more times than there right but thats fine as long as it puts an end to cheaters. i wouldnt use the word baseless because any accusation has to have some merit or else the accusation wouldnt happen to begin with. i would use the words suspicious evidence but needs to be investigated further not baseless.furthermore we need much more scrutiny of players at all tournaments similar to where casinos have rooms of people constantly monitering gambling cheats with video surveliance cameras everywhere. if there were surveilance videos in the bathrooms at elista the whole mess that happened would have been solved. if the casions are able to catch cheats then so should the people running chess tournaments.
wolverine
False accusations cannot be punished. In fact, players should not be required to complain at all. The responsibility to monitor and detect cheating is totally up to the organizers. Players have the right to indicate to the organizers a possible method of cheating that could be employed by a player. This does not translate to a real and proven accusation: it is just a request for investigation about the particular method being indicated. We could impose a code of silence – no public complaints can be made – all complaints must be made privately to the organizers. The organizers reserve the right to make the accusations public. In case the players want to complain against the organizers, then, I am afraid I do not have a good solution for this case. The only valid complaint against the organizers can be one of bias/ineptitude to handle the situation. In the Kramnik vs Topalov case, Topalov was in the right to indicate a possible method of cheating. The organizers made the right decision to avoid that particular method of cheating. The only thing wrong done by Topalov was to make this complaint public (or was it the organizers who made this public?). Kramnik was utterly wrong to take such a hard line stance against the organizers. I believe such acts of abandoning play should be punished severely – merely one dropped point is not enough; a code of conduct fine should also have been imposed on Kramnik.
From comments above, most of which I agree with, it is clear that chess needs to formulate a definition of a reasonable public accusation of cheating. I propose that any such accusation must be backed up by observational evidence of (at least) one of these types:
(a) Reports of signals, as in the bridge scandal and M. Breutigam’s article in last Saturday’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung (translation by ChessBase.com), with witness confirmation.
(b) Possession of illegal playing or transmission devices, as seems to be the main factor in the Umakant Sharma case from last month’s Asian Games in Doha.
(c) Suspiciously high match rates to specific chess program(s), but then you must provide data and log files to back up your claim.
The Topalov-Danailov claims as I’ve seen them give only sketchy circumstantials on (a) or (b) and zero, nada, zilch on (c). Since they continue to press them publicly, the evidence needed to meet this standard of justification should be demanded by everyone they interact with. Without higher expectations demanded by the chess community—in senses this blog aims to grow from below—and awareness of scientific responsibility in (c), we cannot put teeth into any of the above suggestions.
I think the need for some control of the accusation process has been made clear by the World Chess Championship debacle (who amongst us thinks that either Kramnik or Topalov cheated? I certainly don’t.) The damage and embarrasment to chess, and to the reputation of both players (more so to topalov) has been serious. So, to my mind, dealing with false accusations is a serious issue.
I agree with the above poster kwregan and others that expressed concern that sanctions of false accusers would unjustly punish those who simply failed to prove their accusations. I agree that the appropriate remedy of this is to make all claims of cheating private. Moreover, one does not have to make an accusation of cheating in order to alert a TD to potentially suspicious behavior or technology. It should be accepted as part of chess that a player can make a polite request for a TD check on something that causes concern.
A single case of false accusation, as I stated above, should not be punished. This is why I recommended a system for keeping track of those who accuse others repeatedly. A false accuser would, in all likelyhood, be a serial accuser as well. When one has demonstrated a *pattern* of malicious behavior, only then should action be taken.
Brad Hoehne
Wolverine,
It may not apply to the world of OTB chess as much, but I have experienced, from time to time, accusations of cheating in online play. You’ll have to take my word for it, but I don’t cheat. However, on several occaions, defeated and frustrated opponents have accused me of doing just that (even though I’m a pretty mediocre player). Dealing with the consequences was a pain in the you-know-what.
Brad Hoehne
Short take: Veselin Topalov could have been cheating
Vijay Tagore
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 22:59 IST
Nigel Short, a former world championship finalist, tells DNA that Topalov could have received external help. “It is my understanding that the majority of players in San Luis privately believe that Topalov received signalling from Danailov during play. The essence of these allegations, which I heard personally from disgruntled players in Argentina at the time, was not that Topalov constantly received computer advice but only at critical junctures. Indeed, if one were to cheat, a player of Topalov’s strength would only need two or three computer moves per game to put him at an overwhelming advantage vis-a-vis his opponents.”
You mark my word, they are going to prove that Topalov and Danailov have been cheating. The truth will come out.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1077079