23 ms·

Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

519 points by badindentation 4y ago

projektfu 4y ago
This is only legitimate as a prank ("Can you teach my kid Chess?") or as part of some elaborate Ocean's-11-style Rube Goldberg heist. Also for James Bond if the fate of the free world is not at stake.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
vlle 4y ago
Very interesting article. I like reading about cheating and how people try to trick everyone, especially in chess. It seems unusual to me that there’s only 89 points, but I guess thats temporary.
smnplk 4y ago
The future of live chess tournaments be like: [Player] --> [Strip naked] --> [Manual cavity search] --> [Puts on only tournament robe and slippers] --> [Sits at the table]
jonas-w 4y ago
Interesting read, although I know nothing about chess.
sharedfrog 4y ago
This is relevant to today's events because Magnus Carlsen just withdrew from a tournament[1] after yesterday's loss to a significantly lower rated opponent who had previously been suspended for cheating on chess.com. The tournament organizers have also implemented additional anti-cheating protocols starting today. Whatever comes out of these accusations, the chess world will sure enjoy its new infusion of drama. [1] https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1566848734616555523 https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1566848734616555523
- zibby8 4y ago
  Is there any evidence Hans Niemann was suspended specifically for cheating? I’ve seen multiple unsubstantiated claims, but no source that definitively states he was suspended for cheating.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    > but no source that definitively states he was suspended for cheating. And no source will. I'm not sure why chess.com didn't make it public (by a notice on his profile that his account was suspended for Fair Play violations). But yes, the only 2 entities that can definitively state that are: 1. chess.com 2. Hans himself Not sure why chess.com won't, but Hans won't for obvious reasons.
- runnerup 4y ago
  I considered that you could have vibration sensor plates under player's feet but I can imagine several ways this "doesn't work": 1) Feet could be stimulated using electrical voltage (low level shocks). 2) Cheaters could put one foot on their knee and the system would only activate vibration when it was near a 90-degree rotation. 3) Cheaters could incorporate a vibration-damping polymer like sorbothane, probably a particularly low durometer to absorb vibrations between shoe insert and floor plate. I believe the answer is going to have to be establishing a "secure" zone that can't be crossed by anyone without a full x-ray scan of all personal effects and mmWave scanners. If clothing blocks the mmWave scan, people would have to don lighter / more form-fitting clothing while going through the mmWave scanner, send their preferred clothes through the x-ray machine, and then swap into their desired clothes in a secure changing room/bathroom. The main downside to this is increased cost; I'm not even sure how much this would cost to operate. And for which events would FIDE make this extra cost a requirement? Every FIDE rated event seems completely unreasonable - many of these are small local events with very little budget and lots of 1200 rated players. Perhaps any rated event which includes any of the top-10 players? Is there enough money at that level of chess to fund a requirement like this? Still some potential for hiding cheating devices in relatively private areas like bathrooms, changing rooms, utility closets, or even "planting" large objects like potted plants/etc with hidden compartments. Most likely I'd imagine the player wouldn't grab these, they'd have someone they trust hide them in the weeks before the event and have a person retrieve these and then drop them in a secure bathroom stall/etc. These would be, for example, identical shoes to the ones they came in with. Perhaps worth having players go through the scanners again right before they sit down at the table, including in the middle of the match if they take a bathroom break/etc. Maybe that would work, but I'm still concerned about the price -- that would need a separate analysis. How much money is available for each of these matches? The stakes right now are pretty personal but if nations governments get involved in the cheating for reasons of national pride like they do for the Olympics[0] then I'm not sure anyone would be able to stop the cheating. Another strategy might be to change the format of the top level of chess to "allow" cheating by giving everyone access to whatever engine they want, powered by identical hardware and watt-limited. So the competition would be "man+machine" vs "man+machine". There's been some chat about this but I'm not sure that matches wouldn't be so insanely even that you'd need 300+ games to build a reasonable confidence interval so that you can even determine which player "won". Currently the TCEC (highest level engine vs. engine championship) uses 22 games per matchup to determine a clear result. Even that would be excessive. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(2017_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(2017_film) 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chess_Engine_Championship#:~:text=TCEC%20Swiss,-Tournament&text=Swiss%2Dsystem%20tournament%20with%2038,a%20total%20of%20418%20games.&text=Swiss%2Dsystem%20tournament%20with%2044,a%20total%20of%20484%20games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chess_Engine_Championship#....
michaelwm 4y ago
Though I'm not much of a poker player myself, I am friends with many professionals who have found success both online and offline, in games from pot-limit omaha to no-limit hold-em. Cheating in online poker has been around for many years, with varying success by online gaming companies to implement anti-cheat measures in their software. With recent developments in AI, there is renewed discussion about cheating as the best AIs have no trouble beating anything from PLO to NLHE. It was only a matter of time before this started to spread offline, and just a few weeks ago, I heard a story from a friend of a friend who caught a player using a device similar to this during a private game he was hosting. It's only a matter of time before these sorts of devices continue to spread, and I'm not sure how the world will respond. It would be a huge deal to cheat at events like the World Chess Tournament, but the consequences of getting caught will likely stop at complete disgrace. Cheating at events like the World Series of Poker, with tens of millions of dollars on the line, or even worse, private events with potentially billions of dollars at stake, could lead to a hell of a lot worse.
- icelancer 4y ago
  Oh yeah. Mike Postle was 100% cheating and getting fed moves from a confederate. But even if he wasn't, this type of setup with communication could simply maximize imperfect information, run it through a "solver" (which is what poker players call their game engines), and return the best plays. More on the Mike Postle thing in this twoplustwo thread, or of course, Google: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/mike-postle-cheating-allegations-faq-first-post-1753388/index306.html https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/mike...
  - caminante 4y ago
    What a coincidence! I stumbled onto and down the Mike Postle rabbit-hole. [0] It's astonishing that he was blatantly able to peek at his phone, period, and he never got caught! My favorite is the hand where they're playing PLO (with 4 pre-flop cards) and the game overlay is still NLH (2 pre-flop cards). Postle freaks out trying to re-scan the RFID of his pre-flop cards. The behavior makes no sense unless...Postle knew (via his phone) that the game mode was wrong, and he couldn't see his opponents' hands. I'm assuming you have, but if you haven't breezed through Doug's channel, it's fascinating and really approachable. If I were playing online poker, I'd be paranoid that someone is using live assist. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDtE9vrRiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDtE9vrRiA
EGreg 4y ago
Even a stripsearch cannot prevent everything. Competitive play at any casual games is not secure anymore. https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/01/28/239657/lasers-can-send-a-whispered-audio-message-directly-to-one-persons-ear/amp/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/01/28/239657/lasers-ca...
Animats 4y ago
Computer-assisted chess cheating has been going on for over a decade now.[1] It's getting to be embarrassing for humans, that small battery powered devices now win against strong players. At world championship level, at least you still need a laptop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_chess#High-profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_chess#High-profile
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  Magnus Carlsen would have a real hard time drawing stockfish on a phone 1/100 games.
  - hackingthenews 4y ago
    My impression from reading about chess engines online is that drawing is far simpler if that is your explicit goal. Several comments online on different websites claims that they are able to end games in draws against stockfish.
    - SamBam 4y ago
      I'd humbly suggest that those anonymous comments put up or shut up.
      - joshuamorton 4y ago
        There are various videos you can see of strong players forcing draws against stockfish (or engine cheaters online etc.). The general way to do it is to trade everything but rooks and then force a very closed position. Then you shuffle for 50 moves or until contempt makes the computer sacrifice material.
        faeriechangling 4y ago
        I mean I can force a draw against stockfish by just using stockfish myself to beat stockfish. Look to put this into perspective back in 2008 Hikaru Nakamura a world top 10 player won a game once against the then top engine and it was a significant story in the chess world that day. It's been 14 years since then. If people can easily draw stockfish I'd like to see them do it live giving stockfish the same clock. One problem with trying to draw stockfish by trading off its pieces is that stockfish is so dominant it tends to win more games the more complicated positions get, so it's actually hardcoded to be bias towards making positions as complicated as possible, so it will resist you closing the position and trading off pieces to an extent. It's also non-deterministic. You might be able to force it to a draw in some games but it's hard to do this reliably. I'm also by the way not saying Magnus cannot draw stockfish 1/100 games, I'm saying it wouldn't be easy.
nlzoperand 4y ago
I wonder why everyone focuses on electronic communication and wearable devices. There are tons of acoustic side channels if an accomplice watches the live stream outside of the playing venue. Set up construction site and use a hammer just loud enough to be just barely heard from the inside. Bird sounds, music, the possibilities are endless. Very few bits of information need to be transmitted for the best three moves.
- Tangurena2 4y ago
  At least one participant in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire cheated by having an accomplice in the audience coughing. https://millionaire.fandom.com/wiki/Coughing https://millionaire.fandom.com/wiki/Coughing
- deleted 4y ago
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- Victerius 4y ago
  Then chess games will be held inside windowless, purpose built sound proof rooms with only staff members inside, and the players will be forced to leave their shoes and socks at the door and wear tournament-provided slippers. Construction work around the building will also be stopped during the tournament.
  - djtriptych 4y ago
    Sounds extreme but you're basically describing every TV studio + a standard uniform. Not so crazy for entertainment professionals.
  - derpwizard 4y ago
    This sounds like what is already done for some Go/Baduk tournaments. And cameras are only allowed at the beginning and end of matches. https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/70879967/188520577-04332769-6c2f-4517-993b-933456170bc2.png https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/70879967/188520577...
- jletienne 4y ago
gnramires 4y ago
Honestly a Faraday cage should be a very good defense against most attacks including this one. Moderately expensive for a good quality one, probably only affordable for high stakes tournaments (it shouldn't be expensive in terms of materials: a very simple sheet metal cage with adequate electrical connection technique should be enough, but I assume it's too specialized to be cheap -- plus care must be taken with openings and ventilation). Edit: I believe at the moment it's still necessary a fairly large device to run the best engines which can't be concealed (?). Edit2: Oh the engine is running on the Pi 0! Impressive.
- crtasm 4y ago
  This is running locally on hardware on his person, a faraday cage won't help.
  - tiborsaas 4y ago
    A tiny bit of airport security would rule out the rest of the cases :)
- seirim 4y ago
  I think having competitors pass through metal detectors would be helpful.
IncRnd 4y ago
For those who may not be aware, the author reinvented a device (one of many really) that has been used in casinos to cheat at games of chance and table games. Don't actually use something like this. You will always get caught, sooner or later. Depending on who lost money on your match, you will either be tossed out of the tournament, thrown in jail, or killed. Maybe some mix of those will happen. These sorts of things have been used literally for decades.
- yuubi 4y ago
  for instance, the shoe-mount roulette predictor of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie
323 4y ago
Could you hide a bone-conducting bluetooth speaker in your big hair? This way the computer could speak the instructions and confirm the inputs. How about the controls being inside your mouth at the top. The tongue is very agile. But it might be difficult to tolerate. You could use a local anesthetic spray before.
- Victerius 4y ago
  If I was the tournament organizer, all games would be held inside windowless, sound proof rooms doubling as Faraday cages with thick concrete walls, electronic jammers outside to prevent any radio communications, and no one but cleared staff members inside. The players would also be subjected to multiple rounds of metal detectors.
  - YetAnotherNick 4y ago
    Can metal detector detect a gram of Silicon(except transistor I think there are non metallic replacement for everything)? Also, many players bring their own beverage in their container. Seems pretty steep to ban everything for a small minority of cheater.
    - Victerius 4y ago
      Can a computer small enough to contain a chess engine be fitted into one gram? The players beverages would also have to be taken out of their original container and transferred into a tournament-provided container.
      - YetAnotherNick 4y ago
        IBM has 1mm * 1mm chip comparable in performance to 1990 Intel, likely much lower in weight than 1g along with photovoltaic cell for power[0]. I don't think this is enough for beating Magnus, but it could at least find tactics. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/19/17140116/ibm-worlds-smallest-computer-grain-of-salt-solar-powered https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/19/17140116/i....
mensetmanusman 4y ago
With chips the size of rice, any game solved by AI that has large rewards will be irresistible to cheaters. Not many great solutions to this.
Linda703 4y ago
[dead]
FartyMcFarter 4y ago
If one really wanted to cheat with a computer, I imagine it would be better to only carry around enough hardware to communicate wirelessly with it, rather than the whole thing. This would be harder to detect as the amount of hardware would be much smaller, and it would allow using a more powerful computer.
- grog454 4y ago
  How do you prevent the detection of that communication?
  - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
    Does one need to? What kind of radio detection do chess tournaments deploy, and do perform it constantly around every player?
  - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
    Subspace technology
    - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      Quantum entanglement
justinlloyd 4y ago
Inserts self-promotional link to a "Scrabble board solver on a smart watch that can analyze the game board using the smart watch's camera, the tiles you currently hold, and the optimal word to play" and then walks away whistling. Just wait until innocuous looking smart glasses show up.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
For this sort of thing you have to always tell some authority first, before doing it, and have them approve of the reason. Like a judge of the Law, a grandmaster, something like that. And if she/he refuses don't ask anybody else, no forum shopping, you can ask the same authority again after many intervening interactions a single second time, or allow him to return to you. Or put it on the blockchain, there has to be a commitment is the term of art. It's cheating after all, there has to be integrity from before the fact. You have any idea what happens when you dogmatically refuse to cheat?
stripykitteh 4y ago
Avon and Villa did this in Blake's 7 with Orac, back in the day.
markwkw 4y ago
There is little hope for stopping cheaters. example: Moon Ribas, an artist, has a small vibrating sensor embedded permanently in her feet that communicates wirelessly and vibrates whenever there is an earthquake somewhere in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Ribas#Seismic_Sense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Ribas#Seismic_Sense The idea can be extended to an implanted device that receives subtle signals from the user to have a representation of the game state and communicates back through gentle sensations.
- Underqualified 4y ago
  They are now using a 15 minute delay to avoid outside communication. Jamming signals is also entirely possible.
  - rozab 4y ago
    The method in this article uses no outside communication or signalling at all
    - Underqualified 4y ago
      But the Moon Ribas example requires outside communication, I'm just saying that it seems possible to prevent using that effectively. As for electronics, I assume most can be detected ? Maybe implants might pose a problem ?
deleted 4y ago
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weare138 4y ago
Neat. Reminds me of the hidden shoe computers developed by Claude Shannon and Ed Thorp in 1960 for cheating at roulette. https://nautil.us/claude-shannon-the-las-vegas-cheat-6397 https://nautil.us/claude-shannon-the-las-vegas-cheat-6397 J. Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard from UC Santa Cruz also developed one in the late 70s as part of a group called The Eudaemons. http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/layout.html http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/layout.html
- Balgair 4y ago
  go slugs!
- Bluecobra 4y ago
  History Channel had a great series called Breaking Vegas and one episode featured Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard's roulette shoe computer: https://archive.org/details/breaking-vegas-s-1-e-08-beat-the-wheel https://archive.org/details/breaking-vegas-s-1-e-08-beat-the...
- Wingman4l7 4y ago
  I've also read anecdotes of shoe computers for poker, IIRC. Worth mentioning the book, entitled "The Eudaemonic Pie: The Bizarre True Story of How a Band of Physicists and Computer Wizards Took On Las Vegas".
kthejoker2 4y ago
Very interesting, lots of room for improved UX with more sensors to more efficiently communicate opponent moves - "long presses", double and triple taps, "shake your foot", rolls, heel lifts ... if you could get this down to < 2 seconds I think you're in real business. Also for things like "captures-captures" or "only move" some shortcuts would be handy. Maybe some hand and brain style options where you or it select the piece and the other suggests a move ... Wiring up each toe and mapping to a piece type could expedite move suggestion inputs ...
nebulousthree 4y ago
We need a tournament that allows for engines. That way the humans are merely avatars of NNs, and may the best engine win. This may also uncover lots of useful insight for the "all-natural" human tournaments.
- _the_inflator 4y ago
  How would this solve the problem of cheating? What is "the best engine"? An Engine requires rules as well. Cheating is always involved when there are rules. That's why it is called cheating. The idea of professional cheating is not to tell anyone about it. That's why undetected case are usually higher.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    > An Engine requires rules as well. Yes, the basic rules of chess.
    - planede 4y ago
      If that's the only rule, it can quickly become "who can spend more on compute on a single game" championship. Not very interesting.
      - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
        There's a very well known engine tournament called TCEC. For that tournament, all the engines run on the same hardware. The teams submit their binaries to the organizers beforehand, and the organizers run them on the tournament hardware. There are some questions beforehand about what hardware to use (for example, some engines use GPUs and others don't), but after that is settled, the tournament is run in a fair way, hardware-wise.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > We need a tournament that allows for engines. We do. It's called the World Computer Chess Championship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Computer_Chess_Championship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Computer_Chess_Champions...
sgjohnson 4y ago
> I told him that I was planning to recruit a "plausibly-good" chess player to use the shoes to win the world championship, Would one be able to clear a metal detector with this? I doubt it.
- mda 4y ago
  With enough miniaturization, maybe? There are computers small as a grain of sand, sure they don't run stockfish yet, but not impossible. e.g. on 3nm node it s possible to fit 300million transistors per mm2.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    > sure they don't run stockfish yet You don’t need to run stockfish on it. Thin client would suffice.
wombatcringe 4y ago
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  You don't need to be born into wealth to pick up chess as a hobby. It only gets expensive for very high level players (having to attend international tournaments to progress, if you're from a small country where the player pool isn't big enough)
travelhead 4y ago
It wouldn’t be that hard to hack and packet sniff the hotel wifi where all the players are staying and analyzing lines the night before the game.
- guipsp 4y ago
  Maybe if ssl wasn't a thing
icu 4y ago
I'd be interested if any HN members consider James Stanley a 'cyborg' with the shoes on? From what I've found on Wikipedia, it sounds like wearing the shoes is an, "integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedback." This got me thinking that the Nike shoes Marty wore in Back to the Future 2 could also be considered a cybernetics enhancement. To what degree does a device need to be integrated with a human body for that human not to be considered a human any more?
- jetbooster 4y ago
  In artificial hip definitely makes you a cyborg, and I like to imagine by contact lenses as cybernetic vision enhancement devices, though I can see people err-ing on that. But I don't think I would consider my glasses to be 'cybernetic'. In my opinion the difference is whether it sits inside the body (imo, inside the eyelids counts). Pacemaker, insulin pump, cochlear implant. Otherwise, you could claim our phones are cybernetic memory and knowledge enhancements (which isn't entirely wrong) Though I think many of these simply bring you back towards 'baseline healthy human'. For many, the term cyborg requires you to _exceed_ baseline human to be worthy of the term. So if he implanted this device that made him inhumanly good at chess, I think it would count. This is just using a very inefficient keyboard.
ptspts 4y ago
Is there a precise, published-in-advance definition of cheating in the chess contest rules, or are the contest organizers allowed to shift goalposts as they see fit, and ban a player from future contests because of any arbitrary reason they come up with? My naïve definition would be: a player was probably not cheating if they would have been able to come up with the same moves even if they had played in an isolated room with only basic supplies (such as water and sugar for human players and electricity for computer players). Thus a player who is consulting a chess book, a friend, the web or a computer is cheating, because those are not available in an isolated room.
- superhuzza 4y ago
  Yes, if it's a FIDE tournament, there is a precise definition about what is allowed. Of course, this will be applied as interpreted by the arbiters. 12.3 a. During play the players are forbidden to make use of any notes, sources of information or advice, or analyse on another chessboard. 12.3 b. Without the permission of the arbiter a player is forbidden to have a mobile phone or other electronic means of communication in the playing venue, unless they are completely switched off. If any such device produces a sound, the player shall lose the game. The opponent shall win. However, if the opponent cannot win the game by any series of legal moves, his score shall be a draw.
Upvoter33 4y ago
Cheating seems easy to deal with. The players should go into a dressing room with supervision. They take off all of their clothes and don new clothing for the event. They then go out and play. They also probably need to be accompanied to the bathroom with an observer. Of course, this all sounds crazy. But it's not that different than what athletes have to do (if you've ever had to stand around naked waiting to pee into a bottle after a race you know what I'm talking about). Yes, they still could have some kind of in-body thing (tiny earpiece, or weirder thing in some other part of their body), so they probably have to also be scanned for electronics (or, the game has to take place in a location where there is no way to electronically communicate).
JBanis 4y ago
Really can't stand Niemann's arrogant attitude, but cheating is a whole new level, if this is proven, and if this is indeed what Magnus is hinting at. Whatever the outcome, it's not a pretty picture for chess overall. Publicity it will get for sure.
harryvederci 4y ago
> The project is called "Sockfish" because it's a way to operate Stockfish with your socks. I'm working on an alternative that can be inserted in your underwear. Still thinking of a good name, hmm...
- davidguetta 4y ago
  Penish

This is only legitimate as a prank ("Can you teach my kid Chess?") or as part of some elaborate Ocean's-11-style Rube Goldberg heist. Also for James Bond if the fate of the free world is not at stake.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

vlle 4y ago

Very interesting article. I like reading about cheating and how people try to trick everyone, especially in chess. It seems unusual to me that there’s only 89 points, but I guess thats temporary.

smnplk 4y ago

The future of live chess tournaments be like: [Player] --> [Strip naked] --> [Manual cavity search] --> [Puts on only tournament robe and slippers] --> [Sits at the table]

jonas-w 4y ago

Interesting read, although I know nothing about chess.

sharedfrog 4y ago

This is relevant to today's events because Magnus Carlsen just withdrew from a tournament[1] after yesterday's loss to a significantly lower rated opponent who had previously been suspended for cheating on chess.com. The tournament organizers have also implemented additional anti-cheating protocols starting today. Whatever comes out of these accusations, the chess world will sure enjoy its new infusion of drama. [1] https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1566848734616555523 https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1566848734616555523

zibby8 4y ago
Is there any evidence Hans Niemann was suspended specifically for cheating? I’ve seen multiple unsubstantiated claims, but no source that definitively states he was suspended for cheating.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > but no source that definitively states he was suspended for cheating. And no source will. I'm not sure why chess.com didn't make it public (by a notice on his profile that his account was suspended for Fair Play violations). But yes, the only 2 entities that can definitively state that are: 1. chess.com 2. Hans himself Not sure why chess.com won't, but Hans won't for obvious reasons.
runnerup 4y ago
I considered that you could have vibration sensor plates under player's feet but I can imagine several ways this "doesn't work": 1) Feet could be stimulated using electrical voltage (low level shocks). 2) Cheaters could put one foot on their knee and the system would only activate vibration when it was near a 90-degree rotation. 3) Cheaters could incorporate a vibration-damping polymer like sorbothane, probably a particularly low durometer to absorb vibrations between shoe insert and floor plate. I believe the answer is going to have to be establishing a "secure" zone that can't be crossed by anyone without a full x-ray scan of all personal effects and mmWave scanners. If clothing blocks the mmWave scan, people would have to don lighter / more form-fitting clothing while going through the mmWave scanner, send their preferred clothes through the x-ray machine, and then swap into their desired clothes in a secure changing room/bathroom. The main downside to this is increased cost; I'm not even sure how much this would cost to operate. And for which events would FIDE make this extra cost a requirement? Every FIDE rated event seems completely unreasonable - many of these are small local events with very little budget and lots of 1200 rated players. Perhaps any rated event which includes any of the top-10 players? Is there enough money at that level of chess to fund a requirement like this? Still some potential for hiding cheating devices in relatively private areas like bathrooms, changing rooms, utility closets, or even "planting" large objects like potted plants/etc with hidden compartments. Most likely I'd imagine the player wouldn't grab these, they'd have someone they trust hide them in the weeks before the event and have a person retrieve these and then drop them in a secure bathroom stall/etc. These would be, for example, identical shoes to the ones they came in with. Perhaps worth having players go through the scanners again right before they sit down at the table, including in the middle of the match if they take a bathroom break/etc. Maybe that would work, but I'm still concerned about the price -- that would need a separate analysis. How much money is available for each of these matches? The stakes right now are pretty personal but if nations governments get involved in the cheating for reasons of national pride like they do for the Olympics[0] then I'm not sure anyone would be able to stop the cheating. Another strategy might be to change the format of the top level of chess to "allow" cheating by giving everyone access to whatever engine they want, powered by identical hardware and watt-limited. So the competition would be "man+machine" vs "man+machine". There's been some chat about this but I'm not sure that matches wouldn't be so insanely even that you'd need 300+ games to build a reasonable confidence interval so that you can even determine which player "won". Currently the TCEC (highest level engine vs. engine championship) uses 22 games per matchup to determine a clear result. Even that would be excessive. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(2017_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(2017_film) 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chess_Engine_Championship#:~:text=TCEC%20Swiss,-Tournament&text=Swiss%2Dsystem%20tournament%20with%2038,a%20total%20of%20418%20games.&text=Swiss%2Dsystem%20tournament%20with%2044,a%20total%20of%20484%20games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chess_Engine_Championship#....

michaelwm 4y ago

Though I'm not much of a poker player myself, I am friends with many professionals who have found success both online and offline, in games from pot-limit omaha to no-limit hold-em. Cheating in online poker has been around for many years, with varying success by online gaming companies to implement anti-cheat measures in their software. With recent developments in AI, there is renewed discussion about cheating as the best AIs have no trouble beating anything from PLO to NLHE. It was only a matter of time before this started to spread offline, and just a few weeks ago, I heard a story from a friend of a friend who caught a player using a device similar to this during a private game he was hosting. It's only a matter of time before these sorts of devices continue to spread, and I'm not sure how the world will respond. It would be a huge deal to cheat at events like the World Chess Tournament, but the consequences of getting caught will likely stop at complete disgrace. Cheating at events like the World Series of Poker, with tens of millions of dollars on the line, or even worse, private events with potentially billions of dollars at stake, could lead to a hell of a lot worse.

icelancer 4y ago
Oh yeah. Mike Postle was 100% cheating and getting fed moves from a confederate. But even if he wasn't, this type of setup with communication could simply maximize imperfect information, run it through a "solver" (which is what poker players call their game engines), and return the best plays. More on the Mike Postle thing in this twoplustwo thread, or of course, Google: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/mike-postle-cheating-allegations-faq-first-post-1753388/index306.html https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/mike...
- caminante 4y ago
  What a coincidence! I stumbled onto and down the Mike Postle rabbit-hole. [0] It's astonishing that he was blatantly able to peek at his phone, period, and he never got caught! My favorite is the hand where they're playing PLO (with 4 pre-flop cards) and the game overlay is still NLH (2 pre-flop cards). Postle freaks out trying to re-scan the RFID of his pre-flop cards. The behavior makes no sense unless...Postle knew (via his phone) that the game mode was wrong, and he couldn't see his opponents' hands. I'm assuming you have, but if you haven't breezed through Doug's channel, it's fascinating and really approachable. If I were playing online poker, I'd be paranoid that someone is using live assist. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDtE9vrRiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDtE9vrRiA

EGreg 4y ago

Even a stripsearch cannot prevent everything. Competitive play at any casual games is not secure anymore. https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/01/28/239657/lasers-can-send-a-whispered-audio-message-directly-to-one-persons-ear/amp/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/01/28/239657/lasers-ca...

Animats 4y ago

Computer-assisted chess cheating has been going on for over a decade now.[1] It's getting to be embarrassing for humans, that small battery powered devices now win against strong players. At world championship level, at least you still need a laptop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_chess#High-profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_chess#High-profile

faeriechangling 4y ago
Magnus Carlsen would have a real hard time drawing stockfish on a phone 1/100 games.
- hackingthenews 4y ago
  My impression from reading about chess engines online is that drawing is far simpler if that is your explicit goal. Several comments online on different websites claims that they are able to end games in draws against stockfish.
  - SamBam 4y ago
    I'd humbly suggest that those anonymous comments put up or shut up.
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      There are various videos you can see of strong players forcing draws against stockfish (or engine cheaters online etc.). The general way to do it is to trade everything but rooks and then force a very closed position. Then you shuffle for 50 moves or until contempt makes the computer sacrifice material.
      - faeriechangling 4y ago
        I mean I can force a draw against stockfish by just using stockfish myself to beat stockfish. Look to put this into perspective back in 2008 Hikaru Nakamura a world top 10 player won a game once against the then top engine and it was a significant story in the chess world that day. It's been 14 years since then. If people can easily draw stockfish I'd like to see them do it live giving stockfish the same clock. One problem with trying to draw stockfish by trading off its pieces is that stockfish is so dominant it tends to win more games the more complicated positions get, so it's actually hardcoded to be bias towards making positions as complicated as possible, so it will resist you closing the position and trading off pieces to an extent. It's also non-deterministic. You might be able to force it to a draw in some games but it's hard to do this reliably. I'm also by the way not saying Magnus cannot draw stockfish 1/100 games, I'm saying it wouldn't be easy.

nlzoperand 4y ago

I wonder why everyone focuses on electronic communication and wearable devices. There are tons of acoustic side channels if an accomplice watches the live stream outside of the playing venue. Set up construction site and use a hammer just loud enough to be just barely heard from the inside. Bird sounds, music, the possibilities are endless. Very few bits of information need to be transmitted for the best three moves.

Tangurena2 4y ago
At least one participant in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire cheated by having an accomplice in the audience coughing. https://millionaire.fandom.com/wiki/Coughing https://millionaire.fandom.com/wiki/Coughing
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Victerius 4y ago
Then chess games will be held inside windowless, purpose built sound proof rooms with only staff members inside, and the players will be forced to leave their shoes and socks at the door and wear tournament-provided slippers. Construction work around the building will also be stopped during the tournament.
- djtriptych 4y ago
  Sounds extreme but you're basically describing every TV studio + a standard uniform. Not so crazy for entertainment professionals.
- derpwizard 4y ago
  This sounds like what is already done for some Go/Baduk tournaments. And cameras are only allowed at the beginning and end of matches. https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/70879967/188520577-04332769-6c2f-4517-993b-933456170bc2.png https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/70879967/188520577...
jletienne 4y ago

gnramires 4y ago

Honestly a Faraday cage should be a very good defense against most attacks including this one. Moderately expensive for a good quality one, probably only affordable for high stakes tournaments (it shouldn't be expensive in terms of materials: a very simple sheet metal cage with adequate electrical connection technique should be enough, but I assume it's too specialized to be cheap -- plus care must be taken with openings and ventilation). Edit: I believe at the moment it's still necessary a fairly large device to run the best engines which can't be concealed (?). Edit2: Oh the engine is running on the Pi 0! Impressive.

crtasm 4y ago
This is running locally on hardware on his person, a faraday cage won't help.
- tiborsaas 4y ago
  A tiny bit of airport security would rule out the rest of the cases :)
seirim 4y ago
I think having competitors pass through metal detectors would be helpful.

IncRnd 4y ago

For those who may not be aware, the author reinvented a device (one of many really) that has been used in casinos to cheat at games of chance and table games. Don't actually use something like this. You will always get caught, sooner or later. Depending on who lost money on your match, you will either be tossed out of the tournament, thrown in jail, or killed. Maybe some mix of those will happen. These sorts of things have been used literally for decades.

yuubi 4y ago
for instance, the shoe-mount roulette predictor of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie

323 4y ago

Could you hide a bone-conducting bluetooth speaker in your big hair? This way the computer could speak the instructions and confirm the inputs. How about the controls being inside your mouth at the top. The tongue is very agile. But it might be difficult to tolerate. You could use a local anesthetic spray before.

Victerius 4y ago
If I was the tournament organizer, all games would be held inside windowless, sound proof rooms doubling as Faraday cages with thick concrete walls, electronic jammers outside to prevent any radio communications, and no one but cleared staff members inside. The players would also be subjected to multiple rounds of metal detectors.
- YetAnotherNick 4y ago
  Can metal detector detect a gram of Silicon(except transistor I think there are non metallic replacement for everything)? Also, many players bring their own beverage in their container. Seems pretty steep to ban everything for a small minority of cheater.
  - Victerius 4y ago
    Can a computer small enough to contain a chess engine be fitted into one gram? The players beverages would also have to be taken out of their original container and transferred into a tournament-provided container.
    - YetAnotherNick 4y ago
      IBM has 1mm * 1mm chip comparable in performance to 1990 Intel, likely much lower in weight than 1g along with photovoltaic cell for power[0]. I don't think this is enough for beating Magnus, but it could at least find tactics. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/19/17140116/ibm-worlds-smallest-computer-grain-of-salt-solar-powered https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/19/17140116/i....

mensetmanusman 4y ago

With chips the size of rice, any game solved by AI that has large rewards will be irresistible to cheaters. Not many great solutions to this.

Linda703 4y ago

[dead]

FartyMcFarter 4y ago

If one really wanted to cheat with a computer, I imagine it would be better to only carry around enough hardware to communicate wirelessly with it, rather than the whole thing. This would be harder to detect as the amount of hardware would be much smaller, and it would allow using a more powerful computer.

grog454 4y ago
How do you prevent the detection of that communication?
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago
  Does one need to? What kind of radio detection do chess tournaments deploy, and do perform it constantly around every player?
- teaearlgraycold 4y ago
  Subspace technology
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    Quantum entanglement

justinlloyd 4y ago

Inserts self-promotional link to a "Scrabble board solver on a smart watch that can analyze the game board using the smart watch's camera, the tiles you currently hold, and the optimal word to play" and then walks away whistling. Just wait until innocuous looking smart glasses show up.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

For this sort of thing you have to always tell some authority first, before doing it, and have them approve of the reason. Like a judge of the Law, a grandmaster, something like that. And if she/he refuses don't ask anybody else, no forum shopping, you can ask the same authority again after many intervening interactions a single second time, or allow him to return to you. Or put it on the blockchain, there has to be a commitment is the term of art. It's cheating after all, there has to be integrity from before the fact. You have any idea what happens when you dogmatically refuse to cheat?

stripykitteh 4y ago

Avon and Villa did this in Blake's 7 with Orac, back in the day.

markwkw 4y ago

There is little hope for stopping cheaters. example: Moon Ribas, an artist, has a small vibrating sensor embedded permanently in her feet that communicates wirelessly and vibrates whenever there is an earthquake somewhere in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Ribas#Seismic_Sense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Ribas#Seismic_Sense The idea can be extended to an implanted device that receives subtle signals from the user to have a representation of the game state and communicates back through gentle sensations.

Underqualified 4y ago
They are now using a 15 minute delay to avoid outside communication. Jamming signals is also entirely possible.
- rozab 4y ago
  The method in this article uses no outside communication or signalling at all
  - Underqualified 4y ago
    But the Moon Ribas example requires outside communication, I'm just saying that it seems possible to prevent using that effectively. As for electronics, I assume most can be detected ? Maybe implants might pose a problem ?

deleted 4y ago

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weare138 4y ago

Neat. Reminds me of the hidden shoe computers developed by Claude Shannon and Ed Thorp in 1960 for cheating at roulette. https://nautil.us/claude-shannon-the-las-vegas-cheat-6397 https://nautil.us/claude-shannon-the-las-vegas-cheat-6397 J. Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard from UC Santa Cruz also developed one in the late 70s as part of a group called The Eudaemons. http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/layout.html http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/layout.html

Balgair 4y ago
go slugs!
Bluecobra 4y ago
History Channel had a great series called Breaking Vegas and one episode featured Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard's roulette shoe computer: https://archive.org/details/breaking-vegas-s-1-e-08-beat-the-wheel https://archive.org/details/breaking-vegas-s-1-e-08-beat-the...
Wingman4l7 4y ago
I've also read anecdotes of shoe computers for poker, IIRC. Worth mentioning the book, entitled "The Eudaemonic Pie: The Bizarre True Story of How a Band of Physicists and Computer Wizards Took On Las Vegas".

kthejoker2 4y ago

Very interesting, lots of room for improved UX with more sensors to more efficiently communicate opponent moves - "long presses", double and triple taps, "shake your foot", rolls, heel lifts ... if you could get this down to < 2 seconds I think you're in real business. Also for things like "captures-captures" or "only move" some shortcuts would be handy. Maybe some hand and brain style options where you or it select the piece and the other suggests a move ... Wiring up each toe and mapping to a piece type could expedite move suggestion inputs ...

nebulousthree 4y ago

We need a tournament that allows for engines. That way the humans are merely avatars of NNs, and may the best engine win. This may also uncover lots of useful insight for the "all-natural" human tournaments.

_the_inflator 4y ago
How would this solve the problem of cheating? What is "the best engine"? An Engine requires rules as well. Cheating is always involved when there are rules. That's why it is called cheating. The idea of professional cheating is not to tell anyone about it. That's why undetected case are usually higher.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > An Engine requires rules as well. Yes, the basic rules of chess.
  - planede 4y ago
    If that's the only rule, it can quickly become "who can spend more on compute on a single game" championship. Not very interesting.
    - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
      There's a very well known engine tournament called TCEC. For that tournament, all the engines run on the same hardware. The teams submit their binaries to the organizers beforehand, and the organizers run them on the tournament hardware. There are some questions beforehand about what hardware to use (for example, some engines use GPUs and others don't), but after that is settled, the tournament is run in a fair way, hardware-wise.
sgjohnson 4y ago
> We need a tournament that allows for engines. We do. It's called the World Computer Chess Championship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Computer_Chess_Championship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Computer_Chess_Champions...

sgjohnson 4y ago

> I told him that I was planning to recruit a "plausibly-good" chess player to use the shoes to win the world championship, Would one be able to clear a metal detector with this? I doubt it.

mda 4y ago
With enough miniaturization, maybe? There are computers small as a grain of sand, sure they don't run stockfish yet, but not impossible. e.g. on 3nm node it s possible to fit 300million transistors per mm2.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > sure they don't run stockfish yet You don’t need to run stockfish on it. Thin client would suffice.

wombatcringe 4y ago

sgjohnson 4y ago
You don't need to be born into wealth to pick up chess as a hobby. It only gets expensive for very high level players (having to attend international tournaments to progress, if you're from a small country where the player pool isn't big enough)

travelhead 4y ago

It wouldn’t be that hard to hack and packet sniff the hotel wifi where all the players are staying and analyzing lines the night before the game.

guipsp 4y ago
Maybe if ssl wasn't a thing

icu 4y ago

I'd be interested if any HN members consider James Stanley a 'cyborg' with the shoes on? From what I've found on Wikipedia, it sounds like wearing the shoes is an, "integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedback." This got me thinking that the Nike shoes Marty wore in Back to the Future 2 could also be considered a cybernetics enhancement. To what degree does a device need to be integrated with a human body for that human not to be considered a human any more?

jetbooster 4y ago
In artificial hip definitely makes you a cyborg, and I like to imagine by contact lenses as cybernetic vision enhancement devices, though I can see people err-ing on that. But I don't think I would consider my glasses to be 'cybernetic'. In my opinion the difference is whether it sits inside the body (imo, inside the eyelids counts). Pacemaker, insulin pump, cochlear implant. Otherwise, you could claim our phones are cybernetic memory and knowledge enhancements (which isn't entirely wrong) Though I think many of these simply bring you back towards 'baseline healthy human'. For many, the term cyborg requires you to _exceed_ baseline human to be worthy of the term. So if he implanted this device that made him inhumanly good at chess, I think it would count. This is just using a very inefficient keyboard.

ptspts 4y ago

Is there a precise, published-in-advance definition of cheating in the chess contest rules, or are the contest organizers allowed to shift goalposts as they see fit, and ban a player from future contests because of any arbitrary reason they come up with? My naïve definition would be: a player was probably not cheating if they would have been able to come up with the same moves even if they had played in an isolated room with only basic supplies (such as water and sugar for human players and electricity for computer players). Thus a player who is consulting a chess book, a friend, the web or a computer is cheating, because those are not available in an isolated room.

superhuzza 4y ago
Yes, if it's a FIDE tournament, there is a precise definition about what is allowed. Of course, this will be applied as interpreted by the arbiters. 12.3 a. During play the players are forbidden to make use of any notes, sources of information or advice, or analyse on another chessboard. 12.3 b. Without the permission of the arbiter a player is forbidden to have a mobile phone or other electronic means of communication in the playing venue, unless they are completely switched off. If any such device produces a sound, the player shall lose the game. The opponent shall win. However, if the opponent cannot win the game by any series of legal moves, his score shall be a draw.

Upvoter33 4y ago

Cheating seems easy to deal with. The players should go into a dressing room with supervision. They take off all of their clothes and don new clothing for the event. They then go out and play. They also probably need to be accompanied to the bathroom with an observer. Of course, this all sounds crazy. But it's not that different than what athletes have to do (if you've ever had to stand around naked waiting to pee into a bottle after a race you know what I'm talking about). Yes, they still could have some kind of in-body thing (tiny earpiece, or weirder thing in some other part of their body), so they probably have to also be scanned for electronics (or, the game has to take place in a location where there is no way to electronically communicate).

JBanis 4y ago

Really can't stand Niemann's arrogant attitude, but cheating is a whole new level, if this is proven, and if this is indeed what Magnus is hinting at. Whatever the outcome, it's not a pretty picture for chess overall. Publicity it will get for sure.

harryvederci 4y ago

> The project is called "Sockfish" because it's a way to operate Stockfish with your socks. I'm working on an alternative that can be inserted in your underwear. Still thinking of a good name, hmm...

davidguetta 4y ago
Penish