Firstly, the first team, who beat Metropolitan 1 on Thursday 6½ to 4½ with my game adjourned. This leaves the League Table looking rather exciting. That is, if you find battles for second place exciting, since no-one looks like they'll beat Wood Green this season. But at least four teams including ourselves are in contention for the runner up spot...
Meanwhile a week earlier on February 12th Streatham Thirds got a very creditable 4-4 draw against DHSS on February 12th. The result leaves the team around mid-table with four matches to play.
Finally, in non-club news the issue of cheating has reared its ugly head once again:
At the Aeroflot Open, top seeded player Shakhryiar Mamedyarov [on] Sunday accused his opponent Igor Kurnosov of cheating, and after talking to the organizers, Mamedyarov has now withdrawn from the tournament.There's a lot of debate and who's right and who's wrong, what one should and shouldn't do with one's suspicions, and so on. But the big issue to me is: how are large open tournaments going to cope with this kind of thing, if as seems plausible cheating becomes increasingly common and hard to detect? The Linares of this world should have no problem protecting themselves (a handful of players, complete control over venues and security) but tournaments the next tier down? I'm not so sure...
6 comments:
Looks like computers are destroying chess, just like they're destroying everything else.
Just like hammers, knives, cars and alcohol have.
Wot?
Whilst not commenting on individual cases, I do think that organisers should be taking more precautions. The determined cheater will still get through, but i feel that the harder it is to cheat the more chance that they will eventually be caught.
The current situation in large opens where dozens if not hundreds of games are broadcast in real time on the internet is great for the spectator, but makes cheating ridiculously easy and effectively undetectable.
It can't be beyond the grasp of technology to introduce time delays to internet broadcasts, a move which would solve the basic problem. It would only take a delay of 10-15 minutes to make real time computer analysis for the purpose of cheating impractical and would have no effect on the spectator.
Richard
If you play in a weekender with pocket fritz stuck down your trousers, and nip off to the loo at a couple of crucial moments, what can be done to stop you cheating. Nothing. Except...
Only a policy of 'toilet officials' watching all the players as they do their business. I have a hunch may not increase the popularity of chess.
Safe to say that anti-cheating controls will remain generally unsatisfactory until (and it will happen) there is a high profile case of a strong player being caught cheating (or proven beyond doubt to have cheated.)
Only then will organisers at all levels start to realise how damaging it is for the game as a whole.
And cheating possibilities will only get more sophisticated as devices get smaller, which in turn will increase the paranoia etc etc.
I predict that we aint seen nothing yet.
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