An Update on a Cheating Scandal: Not Exactly Just Desserts
About two and a half weeks ago I linked to a story that started off as one of those things that happens on a day of the week ending with the letter "y": a low-rated player makes a string of surprisingly good moves and defeats a higher-rated player, who accuses the lower-rated player of cheating. In this case it happened on Chess.com, the lower-rated player was investigated and deemed to have cheated. Normally that would be the end of it, but the event went viral and the higher-rated player even received death threats.
And normally this would be the end of it: the storm would blow over, the lower-rated player would disappear, and the higher-rated player would eventually get back to Life As Usual™. But once again: not this time. A face-to-face match was arranged between the amateur accused of cheating and an IM. Not the one involved in the original incident, but a countryman - or in this case, countrywoman - of the amateur. You can read more about it here, and watch a video of the event, but I will offer only the conclusions of the sordid event:
1. The amateur really is an amateur. He's not a horrible player in the man-on-the-street sense, but he's not close to the IM level--not tactically, not positionally/strategically, not in terms of his opening knowledge--not in any respect. To err is human, and on a good day he might beat a titled player in blitz if the latter blunders or falls into an opening trap. Amateurs do beat professionals from time to time, especially in online blitz. But when that happens, it's rare that one is accused of cheating. If the pro hangs a piece or misses some sort of relatively simple tactic, the issue is that their level has fallen, not that the amateur is playing suspiciously well. (By way of analogy: If I race with Usain Bolt and win because he pulls a hamstring or trips, no one is going to accuse me of doping.) The reason the IM complained in the online setting, and why his complaint was upheld, was because of the level and sophistication of the amateur's play; it was not merely a matter of a negative result. (Chess.com gave his online performance rating as a stratospheric 3000, while estimating his performance in the three live games at 1127.)
2. The amateur was rewarded. This, to my mind, is the most depressing aspect of the story. The IM he played made $14,000, while the amateur made a tidy $7,000 for his "efforts". Needless to say, the IM who was presumably cheated against hasn't made a penny, had to suffer death threats, and hasn't received an apology or an admission of wrongdoing from his erstwhile opponent.
Reader Comments (3)
We lack sanctions for cheaters. Stronger sanctions than simple anonymous bans.
You can't prevent a local millionaire to spend his money like he wants though. At least the pro player got an easy $14000 payday out of it.
[DM: Not "the" pro player, but "another" one. The one who was wronged got nothing.]
A bit of nitpicking, ie not I'm not coming close to contradicting you: it can happen that an amateur (in my example a semi-pro) beats a much stronger player, especially in blitz, by playing very well. A famous example is Manuel Bosboom (a Dutch IM) beating Kasparov in 1999. My point is that this is an exception (even rarer than "their level has fallen"). When the lower-rated player begins beating much higher rated players one after another there is a very good reason for suspicion, especially online and especially when that lower-rated player is an adult. Of course it is the dream of every low rated player; I've managed to beat two much stronger players myself (one in otb-chess and one in corr. chess) with relatively good chess. Very nice, but over 40 years they are more than compensated by all the crappy moves I made and bad strategies I pursued.
A better analogy is football (soccer) and especially the KNVB Cup. The charm of this competition is that sometimes an amateur team plays better than ever and beats a top team (and even rarer two or three in a row, like IJsselmeervogels back in 1975). However overall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNVB_Cup
the three big ones have won more than half of the Cups last 60 years.
[DM: I totally agree--in blitz in particular I've beaten plenty of 2700s. But if I were owning those guys, and my rating had radically increased over the past few months, and - as is becoming the case now, sadly, I'm an old or semi-old guy, and my play typically shows a level of overall sophistication uncharacteristic of my "real" rating, then we're in fishy territory.
P.S. I remember the Bosboom game, as it was in NiC. From what I recall of his style, Bosboom was a bit of a crazy man, but in that game he won playing healthy chess while Kasparov's kingside attack came up short. (And that, btw, is one of the ways lower-rated players can win--letting the stronger player go crazy and self-destruct.)]
I know Bosboom personally - yes he is a bit crazy as a chess player and as a person. He also beat/crushed Peter Leko at the 2014 European Club Cup (classical time control), comments at chessgames.com mention a link to a Youtube interview (I think by Peter Doggers) with the winner. That game contributed to his third GM norm, but two norms were over 7 games so he would need a fourth one (and Elo 2500 which he never had). After beating me with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Qe7?! he said "it isn't that bad, I also beat Nigel Short in this variation".
I, 1900ish amateur, recently beat a FM and a GM (both past their prime) in online blitz, both times in part because I was prepared for their dodgy openings - I know the FM for years, and the GM had played the same opening against me before (the first time I knew it was dodgy but couldn't remember why, the second time I remembered why). But the games were shaky from both sides.
The other amateur played flawlessly on the Internet, and is much weaker in real life than even me - as he convincingly demonstrated.