This is how chess cheating works – SWR Sport

Chess is booming. Corona helped the 1,500-year-old game gain unprecedented popularity. But even before that, chess was one of the most popular sports on the Twitch streaming platform. Numerous players not only live from prize money, but also from streaming their games. But of course only the best. This leads to to illegally sneak into the ranks of these best. So does Hans Niemann. He admitted to having previously cheated at online chess: “I was willing to do anything to increase my stream.”

Cheating is often about boosting your own Elo rating (named after the inventor Arpad Elo). The higher it is, the stronger the player. With a high Elo rating you gain reputation in the scene, you can play against better opponents and you can participate in more important tournaments.

Complete chess tournament invented in Ukraine

In 2005, an entire tournament in Ukraine was fictitious – including result lists and alleged photos of the event. Anything to artificially boost some players’ Elo rating. The Elo manipulation also works in the other direction: Some players make themselves worse on purpose, for example in order to be able to participate in amateur tournaments with comparatively high prize money – although they should actually play in the professional area due to their strength.

This type of scam happens all the time, but is comparatively rare. It happens much more often that people cheat in the game itself – through chess programs or apps. Since the IBM computer “Deep Blue” defeated the then world champion Garry Kasparov in the mid-1990s, the technology has advanced so much that people no longer stand a chance against the programs. Nowadays, any amateur can defeat the best players in the world with the help of a smartphone.

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Chess programs achieve higher Elo ratings

To put it in perspective, the Grandmaster title requires an Elo rating of at least 2,500. The highest ever achieved by a human being was 2882. Achieved by Magnus Carlsen in 2014. Chess programs now easily reach 3,500.

This is due to their sheer computing power: There are an incredible number of possible moves in chess. 10 to the power of 123 to be exact – that’s a 1 followed by a hundred and twenty-three zeros. Even a super computer cannot calculate so many positions. But an artificial intelligence comes much closer to the goal than a human.

The most powerful chess computers are called Alpha Zero and Leela Chess Zero, among others. Both are self-taught with an artificial neural network – they play millions of games against themselves and evaluate the positions based on the games played before. Eventually, they can just “see” what a good position is. Far better than any human.

Cheaters let chess programs play

And cheaters take advantage of this: They simply enter all previous moves into a chess program and then play as the app suggests. Of course, the easiest way is to play online games. You simply run chess software in a second browser tab or on your smartphone and use it like a cheat sheet in a class test.

In on-site tournaments, of course, cheating is much more difficult. It is of course forbidden to look at the mobile phone during the game. Nevertheless, some find a way – for example by leaving a smartphone on the toilet and going to the toilet during important game phases.

Sex toy scam rumors

Other scammers get help from accomplices who transmit the right moves to them, for example by means of a button in their ear. There are even rumors that the tips could be delivered via a remote controlled sex toy placed in the player’s body. Because the smallest piece of information is enough, a small vibrating receiver could be enough. Whole trains could be transmitted with Morse code. Knight on square A 3 would then simply be SA3 or “… / .- / …–“.

But regardless of whether it’s with a mobile phone on the toilet, accomplices in the audience or balls vibrating in the butt: if you find a way to get the tips from the chess program to the player on the board, it’s relatively easy to cheat.

Organizers introduce strict controls

That’s why the organizers of chess tournaments try to introduce controls that are as strict as possible. There are metal detectors at the entrance, the bins are searched for hidden smartphones. Or the games are streamed online with a time delay to make it impossible for illegal helpers to cheat on the screen. To prove he wasn’t cheating, Hans Niemann even offered to play naked in the future.

However, since such controls are only of any use in games on the board, the organizers of online tournaments rely on another transfer method: they analyze the games using statistical analyses. They calculate whether a player needs the same amount of time for simple and complicated moves, whether he suddenly plays much better than before, whether he suspiciously often looks to the side where a second screen could be. And they compare the player’s moves with those of a piece of software. Since even the world‘s best players usually do not match more than 80 or 85 percent, a significantly higher value can be an indication of cheating.

Analysis of Hans Niemann’s games

The website Cess.com analyzed Hans Niemann’s online games and came to the conclusion in a 72-page report that he probably cheated in more than 100 games – significantly more often than he himself admitted. In some games, his moves completely matched those of chess software. This is still no proof that he actually used such a chess program. It could also be coincidence. Or Niemann is just such an exceptional talent that he plays as well as a computer. For Chess.com, however, the evidence was enough to ban Niemann from the site.

However, the evidence is often less clear. Because grandmasters usually don’t need help with every move, often a tiny hint is enough to tip a game. And that’s what makes it so difficult to catch scammers.