5 ms·

You can't really cheat in Chess. I mean you can con-man move 2 pieces, but its very very easy to detect with spectators (and impossible online)... Vs team car

You can't really cheat in Chess. I mean you can con-man move 2 pieces, but its very very easy to detect with spectators (and impossible online)... Vs team card games... where you have 2 players working together that aren't allowed to talk. The only way to "fix" this is allow full communication between partners. Allow them to text during the game. Or any kind of signal. You need to level the playing field. The honor system is fine for a fun game with friends, but not fine in anything "competitive".

Iefthandrule 5y ago
There are plenty of ways to cheat at chess. Here's one: program chess pieces to make the optimal move for you. If you are not allowed to provide the pieces, find out the pieces being used ahead of time and create programmable replicas. Then swap each piece out with your programmed pieces under your sleeve.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  But easy to verify. Strip search before game, etc.
  - Iefthandrule 5y ago
    That's why you pay off the guards, etc.
neaden 5y ago
People cheat in chess all the time, using an engine to help them out, or before that getting outside assistance. Take a look into the Korchnoi v Karpov match for world champion which had accusations of cheating involving secret messages in yogur and one player hiring a hypnotist to be in the audience and the other responding by befriending two local murderers and bringing them to the match. More recently Anna Rudolph was accused of hiding a computer in her lip balm.
- yifanl 5y ago
  Context: "recently" was over a decade ago, well before electronics of any sophistication could reasonably fit in such a form factor, if anyone was curious.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    well before electronics of any sophistication could reasonably fit in such a form factor What level of sophistication would be required to get an edge from a 1cm by 3-4cm cylinder of computing and batteries?
    - thenanyu 5y ago
      no one in the chess community seriously believes Anna cheated. there's been plenty of analysis e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JedouTRZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JedouTRZo
- saghm 5y ago
  > secret messages in yogur At first I thought "yogur" was a word from a different language, but after trying and failing to find it when searching, I have to ask: did you mean...yogurt? How does one leave a secret message in yogurt?
  - dimatura 5y ago
    Under the lid, presumably.
    - compiler-guy 5y ago
      Doesn't have to be under the lid. The flavor you send could mean something like: Position not winnable, play for a draw, or "the novelty move we had planned for this position has been found to be flawed."
  - stordoff 5y ago
    > When Karpov's team sent him a blueberry yogurt during a game without any request for one by Karpov, the Korchnoi team protested, claiming it could be some kind of code. They later said this was intended as a parody of earlier protests, but it was taken seriously at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1978 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1978 > On the 25th move of game 2, a waiter delivered a tray with a glass of violet colored yogurt to Karpov. After the game Leeuwerik sent a letter to Schmid protesting the yogurt. 'It is clear that a cunningly arranged distribution of edible items to one player during the game, emanating from one delegation or the other, could convey a kind of code message'. Although the letter was almost certainly tongue-in-cheek, Baturinsky took it seriously and suggested that the binoculars Leeuwerik used during the game might also convey a coded message to Korchnoi. https://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/78kk$$01.htm https://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/78kk$$01.htm It's also used a plot point in the musical Chess - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_(musical) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_(musical)
chowells 5y ago
Cheating in online chess is easy. You just throw the current position into stockfish (or some other software) and see what it would do. I don't know if it's common, but it certainly happens. But you're right about bridge. The game design is utterly broken when you have people playing who care about winning more than they do the spirit of the game. There's no way to prevent cheating at all. Teams can always develop additional channels of information, even on top of the official public one, to exchange information covertly. There's just no way to prevent it.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  You are right about online chess.. so let's stick to inperson for a serious game.
  - beermonster 5y ago
    Tournament chess players have already been caught cheating in person using mobile phones. Recent example [1] [1] https://www.chess.com/news/view/igors-rausis-58-under-investigation-of-cheating https://www.chess.com/news/view/igors-rausis-58-under-invest...
- handrous 5y ago
  From the caught cheating scandals I've read about, and with how easy it would be to cheat in small ways at bridge, I'm like 90% sure that all or nearly all bridge partnerships [EDIT: in "serious", competitive bridge, I mean] are cheating in limited, sparingly-used, practically-impossible-to-catch ways. Money's on the line, after all.
vkou 5y ago
> You can't really cheat in Chess. At the top level, receiving a single bit of information from an observer is enough to turn the game. That bit of information is "Your opponent blundered." Modern chess engines can answer this question far faster than humans.
- adharmad 5y ago
  To a top flight grandmaster, even a signal indicating "think now" is sufficient. No actual variations or moves need to be communicated. Vishy Anand had mentioned in an interview that he would be virtually unbeatable if he received a simple signal from an observer indicating that the current position is a critical position in the game.
kwindla 5y ago
I'm genuinely interested in the reasoning behind this: > The honor system is fine for a fun game with friends, but not fine in anything "competitive". Is the honor system "not fine" in competitive situations because you have a deontological view that the only rules that matter are rules that are mechanistically enforceable, or is it not fine because you have a consequentialist view that competitive situations will usually devolve into something messy and unfair if all rules are not mechanistically enforceable? I see the logic and appeal of both lines of reasoning, but they're quite different and people might easily disagree (for different reasons) with each. See also my comment about ultimate frisbee, elsewhere in this discussion.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  As someone who has played semi-competitive games for a long time.. yes, the nature of man is to cheat ;) Not everyone, but enough. Rather than try to shape man, I would rather make a game "cheat proof".
  - chmod775 5y ago
    > As someone who has played semi-competitive games for a long time.. yes, the nature of man is to cheat It is not. But it doesn't take many cheaters to ruin a game for everyone. In competitive online games, I'd estimate that less than 5% of all players in my games are behaving dishonorably in some way. And that is even though aimbots, AI assistants etc. are readily available to those who seek them out. If they weren't online games, the number would probably be even lower. In any case, those numbers would be far away from the point where you could make statements like "the nature of man is to cheat". That feels a bit like saying "in stories most people identify with villains". They obviously don't - most people don't want to be that kind of person. Though obviously some have given up on themselves.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    I can't remember the last time I played a game with someone who cheated. The nature of humans is to murder, steal, etc., but it's not really a risk when I'm playing chess. In other words, people have free will, they have a choice, to cheat or not.
CalChris 5y ago
You can agree to an outcome (win, lose, draw) ahead of time. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/sports/chess-karjakin-mishra-grandmasters.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/sports/chess-karjakin-mis...
AlbertCory 5y ago
Sure you can. Did you watch "Queen's Gambit"? I consider it cheating to recess for the day, then have your team game out all the alternatives for you. It's supposed to be you against your opponent, period. I don't think bridge would really work if you allowed open communication. I take it you've never played?
- brianwawok 5y ago
  Right, you would need to finish a high level game in a single day to prevent that scenario.
  - CrazyStat 5y ago
    Which we do, these days. Recesses are a thing of the past, and that wasn't considered cheating at the time.
- DSMan195276 5y ago
  That seems more like a complaint about the game itself, it can't really be cheating if there's no rule against it nor anybody hiding it. It was also part of the game to try an influence when the adjournment will happen to give yourself a more favorable position to analyze (and also determine who has to seal the last move). FWIW adjournment never really happens anymore, largely because computers just make the analysis too easy and time controls are shorter. And I do agree that it does ruin a certain aspect of the game, but I don't think that makes it cheating, it was just a different time.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    Once upon a time in a Diplomacy tournament, two players locked a third into a bathroom, forcing the third player to miss a turn. The referee ruled that was acceptable, although I think later tournaments forbid that sort of thing.
    - LanceH 5y ago
      Locking someone in a bathroom is false imprisonment and not really a clever way of playing the game. If this were a tournament it would be easy enough to get the referee's ruling reversed by threatening arrest of the players guilty of doing it. This, of course, would be blackmail and also illegal -- but much more in the spirit of the game.
CydeWeys 5y ago
> You can't really cheat in Chess. You certainly can cheat in Chess. Cheating in Chess has been a problem (or a perceived problem) for a long time, both online and in person, and the in person cheating long pre-dates computers even being able to play Chess. It's even the same kind of cheating as used in Bridge, namely, another party uses hidden signals to communicate to you. E.g. you have a better player (or a team of players that collectively are better) in the audience that surreptitiously signal moves to you. And in the modern era of course there are endless ways to use computers to cheat at Chess, similar to what cheating in casinos can look like.

Iefthandrule 5y ago

There are plenty of ways to cheat at chess. Here's one: program chess pieces to make the optimal move for you. If you are not allowed to provide the pieces, find out the pieces being used ahead of time and create programmable replicas. Then swap each piece out with your programmed pieces under your sleeve.

brianwawok 5y ago
But easy to verify. Strip search before game, etc.
- Iefthandrule 5y ago
  That's why you pay off the guards, etc.

neaden 5y ago

People cheat in chess all the time, using an engine to help them out, or before that getting outside assistance. Take a look into the Korchnoi v Karpov match for world champion which had accusations of cheating involving secret messages in yogur and one player hiring a hypnotist to be in the audience and the other responding by befriending two local murderers and bringing them to the match. More recently Anna Rudolph was accused of hiding a computer in her lip balm.

yifanl 5y ago
Context: "recently" was over a decade ago, well before electronics of any sophistication could reasonably fit in such a form factor, if anyone was curious.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  well before electronics of any sophistication could reasonably fit in such a form factor What level of sophistication would be required to get an edge from a 1cm by 3-4cm cylinder of computing and batteries?
  - thenanyu 5y ago
    no one in the chess community seriously believes Anna cheated. there's been plenty of analysis e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JedouTRZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JedouTRZo
saghm 5y ago
> secret messages in yogur At first I thought "yogur" was a word from a different language, but after trying and failing to find it when searching, I have to ask: did you mean...yogurt? How does one leave a secret message in yogurt?
- dimatura 5y ago
  Under the lid, presumably.
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    Doesn't have to be under the lid. The flavor you send could mean something like: Position not winnable, play for a draw, or "the novelty move we had planned for this position has been found to be flawed."
- stordoff 5y ago
  > When Karpov's team sent him a blueberry yogurt during a game without any request for one by Karpov, the Korchnoi team protested, claiming it could be some kind of code. They later said this was intended as a parody of earlier protests, but it was taken seriously at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1978 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1978 > On the 25th move of game 2, a waiter delivered a tray with a glass of violet colored yogurt to Karpov. After the game Leeuwerik sent a letter to Schmid protesting the yogurt. 'It is clear that a cunningly arranged distribution of edible items to one player during the game, emanating from one delegation or the other, could convey a kind of code message'. Although the letter was almost certainly tongue-in-cheek, Baturinsky took it seriously and suggested that the binoculars Leeuwerik used during the game might also convey a coded message to Korchnoi. https://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/78kk$$01.htm https://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/78kk$$01.htm It's also used a plot point in the musical Chess - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_(musical) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_(musical)

chowells 5y ago

Cheating in online chess is easy. You just throw the current position into stockfish (or some other software) and see what it would do. I don't know if it's common, but it certainly happens. But you're right about bridge. The game design is utterly broken when you have people playing who care about winning more than they do the spirit of the game. There's no way to prevent cheating at all. Teams can always develop additional channels of information, even on top of the official public one, to exchange information covertly. There's just no way to prevent it.

brianwawok 5y ago
You are right about online chess.. so let's stick to inperson for a serious game.
- beermonster 5y ago
  Tournament chess players have already been caught cheating in person using mobile phones. Recent example [1] [1] https://www.chess.com/news/view/igors-rausis-58-under-investigation-of-cheating https://www.chess.com/news/view/igors-rausis-58-under-invest...
handrous 5y ago
From the caught cheating scandals I've read about, and with how easy it would be to cheat in small ways at bridge, I'm like 90% sure that all or nearly all bridge partnerships [EDIT: in "serious", competitive bridge, I mean] are cheating in limited, sparingly-used, practically-impossible-to-catch ways. Money's on the line, after all.

vkou 5y ago

> You can't really cheat in Chess. At the top level, receiving a single bit of information from an observer is enough to turn the game. That bit of information is "Your opponent blundered." Modern chess engines can answer this question far faster than humans.

adharmad 5y ago
To a top flight grandmaster, even a signal indicating "think now" is sufficient. No actual variations or moves need to be communicated. Vishy Anand had mentioned in an interview that he would be virtually unbeatable if he received a simple signal from an observer indicating that the current position is a critical position in the game.

kwindla 5y ago

I'm genuinely interested in the reasoning behind this: > The honor system is fine for a fun game with friends, but not fine in anything "competitive". Is the honor system "not fine" in competitive situations because you have a deontological view that the only rules that matter are rules that are mechanistically enforceable, or is it not fine because you have a consequentialist view that competitive situations will usually devolve into something messy and unfair if all rules are not mechanistically enforceable? I see the logic and appeal of both lines of reasoning, but they're quite different and people might easily disagree (for different reasons) with each. See also my comment about ultimate frisbee, elsewhere in this discussion.

brianwawok 5y ago
As someone who has played semi-competitive games for a long time.. yes, the nature of man is to cheat ;) Not everyone, but enough. Rather than try to shape man, I would rather make a game "cheat proof".
- chmod775 5y ago
  > As someone who has played semi-competitive games for a long time.. yes, the nature of man is to cheat It is not. But it doesn't take many cheaters to ruin a game for everyone. In competitive online games, I'd estimate that less than 5% of all players in my games are behaving dishonorably in some way. And that is even though aimbots, AI assistants etc. are readily available to those who seek them out. If they weren't online games, the number would probably be even lower. In any case, those numbers would be far away from the point where you could make statements like "the nature of man is to cheat". That feels a bit like saying "in stories most people identify with villains". They obviously don't - most people don't want to be that kind of person. Though obviously some have given up on themselves.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  I can't remember the last time I played a game with someone who cheated. The nature of humans is to murder, steal, etc., but it's not really a risk when I'm playing chess. In other words, people have free will, they have a choice, to cheat or not.

CalChris 5y ago

You can agree to an outcome (win, lose, draw) ahead of time. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/sports/chess-karjakin-mishra-grandmasters.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/sports/chess-karjakin-mis...

AlbertCory 5y ago

Sure you can. Did you watch "Queen's Gambit"? I consider it cheating to recess for the day, then have your team game out all the alternatives for you. It's supposed to be you against your opponent, period. I don't think bridge would really work if you allowed open communication. I take it you've never played?

brianwawok 5y ago
Right, you would need to finish a high level game in a single day to prevent that scenario.
- CrazyStat 5y ago
  Which we do, these days. Recesses are a thing of the past, and that wasn't considered cheating at the time.
DSMan195276 5y ago
That seems more like a complaint about the game itself, it can't really be cheating if there's no rule against it nor anybody hiding it. It was also part of the game to try an influence when the adjournment will happen to give yourself a more favorable position to analyze (and also determine who has to seal the last move). FWIW adjournment never really happens anymore, largely because computers just make the analysis too easy and time controls are shorter. And I do agree that it does ruin a certain aspect of the game, but I don't think that makes it cheating, it was just a different time.
- mcguire 5y ago
  Once upon a time in a Diplomacy tournament, two players locked a third into a bathroom, forcing the third player to miss a turn. The referee ruled that was acceptable, although I think later tournaments forbid that sort of thing.
  - LanceH 5y ago
    Locking someone in a bathroom is false imprisonment and not really a clever way of playing the game. If this were a tournament it would be easy enough to get the referee's ruling reversed by threatening arrest of the players guilty of doing it. This, of course, would be blackmail and also illegal -- but much more in the spirit of the game.

CydeWeys 5y ago

> You can't really cheat in Chess. You certainly can cheat in Chess. Cheating in Chess has been a problem (or a perceived problem) for a long time, both online and in person, and the in person cheating long pre-dates computers even being able to play Chess. It's even the same kind of cheating as used in Bridge, namely, another party uses hidden signals to communicate to you. E.g. you have a better player (or a team of players that collectively are better) in the audience that surreptitiously signal moves to you. And in the modern era of course there are endless ways to use computers to cheat at Chess, similar to what cheating in casinos can look like.