I received several emails in response to the previous post from friends who have played chess for decades, and for whom I have a great deal of respect. The first one is from the Discman:
“I don’t know man…If a player makes the exact same moves throughout a game/tournament as a GM+-calibre computer program, that is enough evidence for me that he is being fed moves somehow. No human can play a tactically perfect game without the aid of a computer. It would be relatively easy to do – simply have some device that pulsates. Tape that device to your skin under your clothes. Have a partner generate the correct move using the computer program and send coded pulses to the player at the board. This device could probably be created using only plastics so it could get through a metal detector. Just like Brady Anderson’s 51-homer year after demonstrating that he was a 15-homer/year player for the rest of his career – I am almost as certain that he was juicing that year (although I’m not as certain as I am in the chess example). I agree with the concept of innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt, but playing tactically perfect chess removes this shadow in my opinion. I don’t have a solution – clearly strip searching chess players is ridiculous. The ease of using computer programs to generate chess moves is one of several major issues killing chess.”
The next one is from Big Mac:
http://now.msn.com/rich-lee-does-diy-headphone-implant
“It still requires a loop antenna but there is another person who did it for medical reasons, he is going blind.
This will be hard to catch. Implants are here.”
This could possibly mean the end of tournament chess as we have known it. If you go to the Chessbase website (http://www.chessbase.com) and enter the word “cheating” into the search box you will find page after page of article after endless article on cheating, and more cheating. Proving that the threat is indeed stronger than the execution is an article from 19/12/2006 entitled, “Topalov: Kramnik will never admit that he cheated…” Then there is the article from1/2/2007, “Nigel Short pushes for cheating enquiry,” which concerns cheating allegations leveled at Veselin Topalov and Silvio Danailov during the Wijk aan Zee tournament. The sad fact is that computer chess programs have become so powerful that no one will ever know for certain whether or not one of the top players in the world, the so-called “Super Grandmasters,” cogitated the outstanding move, or if it came from an algorithm in some machine somewhere, maybe even in the “cloud.”
I shudder to think what would happen today if a player happened to have the tournament of his life, as did Expert Alan Trefler at the World Open in 1975. From Wikipedia: In the open section of the 1975 World Open chess tournament, played in New York, expert Alan Trefler (Elo rating 2075, 125 points below the lowest master rating), and ranked 115th in the tournament, scores 8-1 to tie for first with International Grandmaster Pal Benko, rated 2504, ahead of Grandmasters Nicolas Rossolimo and Walter Browne.[8] • 8) ^ Chess Life & Review, September 1975 (available on DVD), pp. 586-87. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Trefler) If this happened in the climate of today Chessbase would no doubt lead the charge against such an occurrence being legitimate because the odds of an Expert winning the World Open would certainly be prohibitive. It is a good thing Alan Trefler did what he did “back in the day,” because if he had just won this year’s World Open, he would be hounded to the point of contemplating suicide!
It has gotten to the point where there are so many articles on the chess websites that I can no longer read them all due to a lack of time. Here are two on my roundtoit list: http://www.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4010353/irina-lymar-fide-must-develop-anti-cheating-rules-030713.aspx & http://www.chessvibes.com/macieja-on-fighting-cheating-in-chess
Then there is the GM who gets down to brass tacks (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=get%20down%20to%20brass%20tacks) better than anyone on the web, the irrepressible Kevin Spraggett. I refer you to “Spraggett on Chess” for his inimitable take on the matter: http://kevinspraggettonchess.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/friday-coffee-8/
Armchair Warrior 