*** Welcome to piglix ***

Cheating in chess


Cheating in chess refers to a deliberate violation of the rules of chess or other unethical behaviour that is intended to give an unfair advantage to a player or team. Cheating can occur in many forms and can take place before, during, or possibly even after a game. Commonly cited instances of cheating include: collusion with spectators or other players, use of chess engines, rating manipulation, and violations of the touch-move rule. Many suspiciously motivated practices are not comprehensively covered by the rules of chess. On ethical or moral grounds only, such practices may be judged by some as acceptable, and by others as cheating.

Even if an arguably unethical action is not covered explicitly by the rules, article 12.1 of the FIDE laws of chess states: "The players shall take no action that will bring the game of chess into disrepute." For example, while deliberately sneaking a captured piece back onto the board may be construed as an illegal move that is sanctioned by a time bonus to the opponent and a reinstatement of the last legal position, the rule forbidding actions that bring chess into disrepute may also be invoked to hand down a more severe sanction such as the loss of the game.

Cheating at chess is almost as old as the game itself, and may even have caused chess-related deaths. According to one legend, a dispute over cheating at chess led King Canute to murder a Danish nobleman. One of the most anthologized chess stories is Slippery Elm (1929) by Percival Wilde, involving a ruse to allow a weak player to beat the club champion, using messages passed on "Slippery Elm" brand throat lozenges. Television shows have engaged the plot of cheating in chess, including a Mission: Impossible episode and a Cheers episode.

In contrast to the modern methods of cheating by playing moves calculated by machines, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the public were hoaxed by the opposite deception in which machines played moves of hidden humans. The first and most famous of the chess automaton hoaxes was The Turk (1770), followed by Ajeeb (1868), and Mephisto (1886).

Over the years, there have been many accusations of collusion, either of players deliberately losing (often to help a friend or teammate get a title norm), or of players agreeing to draws to help both players in a tournament. One of the earliest evidences is with the Fifth American Chess Congress in 1880, when Preston Ware accused James Grundy of reneging on a deal to draw the game, with Grundy instead trying to play for a win. A contemporary newspaper article noted "Ware’s avowal of his right to sell a game in a tourney was a novelty in chess ethics ... Ware’s veracity has not been questioned, only his obliquity of moral vision ..." In later defense of Ware's ethics, six prior allegations of similar collusion and bribery were listed from 1876 to 1880 alone.


...
Wikipedia

...