Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

[Wayne Komer]

There was a meeting today of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee. The special guests were IA/FST/IO Israel Gelfer (ISR), the IM and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering of Buffalo University, Kenneth W. Regan (USA), ACP Board Director, Yuri Garrett (ITA), GM Konstantin Landa (RUS) and IA Laurent Freyd (FRA).

Because it deals with the future of chess, I have transcribed the whole interview between Sergei Tiviakov and Yuri Garrett. They were joined at the end by Konstantin Landa. The video is near the start of the Round Nine, Paris Grand Prix recording.

Yuri Garrett is an International Organizer, born in 1969, with no rating. He speaks quite fluent English with an American accent. He is a flamboyant, enthusiastic and persuasive speaker. The interview lasted about one hour.
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Interview with Sergei Tiviakov and Yuri Garrett

Elancourt, France

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Sergei – Most of people connected with chess know Yuri Garrett very well. I have known him for years and he plays a very important role in modern chess. He is the organizer of numerous Italian chess tournaments. I have played in tournaments organized by him. He is also the owner of a chess-publishing house in Rome, producing many interesting chess books. He is also the manager of many Italian and international players. At the moment he is a member of the board of the Association of Chess Professionals. The latest thing he is busy with is being a member of the Anti-Cheating Committee with FIDE. Cheating in chess has become a very serious and important problem.

Yuri – Our committee was just tackling cheating in the other room. Cheating is a major problem and obstacle to chess today. It is undermining our credibility and stability. For this reason FIDE and the ACP teamed up and we are working very hard on the problem.

Cheating has always occurred, not only in chess but also in everything, and it evolves. We cannot devise a system to beat cheating as it is today, because it will be old tomorrow. Therefore, we are working hard to devise a framework, whereby we will combine a series of tests of empowerment actions and start tackling cheating.

Sergei – When was the Anti-Cheating Commission established?

Yuri – In the last six months.

We are trying to combine physical and statistical evidence. We shall provide arbiters with changes in the regulations so they will have more powers. Arbiters will have to undergo extra training, so they will have more skills and take a more proactive stance. We are used to having an arbiter sitting in a room behind a computer, more or less overseeing the room, waiting for something to happen. This can no longer be. An arbiter has to be more and more like a ref in football, roaming the field in search of offensive behavior, so to speak. Also, he has to be empowered like in football.

There will be changes to the laws of chess. When you are playing chess, you are not out there in the world. You are in a regulated activity as in football. There is special attire in football because there are special regulations.
It is reasonable to say that in the laws of chess, there will be a change in the regulations in searching powers for arbiters. To what extent it is difficult to say.

Sergei – Isn’t it easier to just forbid all electronic devices in the playing hall?

Yuri – No. In chess, we have not only Olympiads but also amateur tournaments. In the latter, people come from the office, say, and they come with their laptops, cameras, watches and mobiles with them. We cannot ask everyone to leave them all behind. That won’t work. The point is finding a way that the player who comes into the playing hall with these devices is not allowed to use them. We have found a few systems, which are under debate to solve this. We will probably have different tiers of regulations – one for top tournaments with professionals and another for amateurs.

For top tournaments there are sponsors, a big budget etc and we can have serious control. You cannot ask a small organizer to have a safe, scanners and scramblers and all these things because these things will impact his budget severely. We can recommend their use and it now becomes a market issue. If an organizer can provide a locker for free for each player where you can put your devices and take your key with you – he wins in the market. He is offering an extra service. But a small organizer who cannot afford them cannot be forced to do this.

Sergei – There were cases recently of people using a computer in the washroom but there was no punishment.

Yuri – If you don’t have a regulation in place then there is no sanction. We are establishing these regulations now. If you have a regulation saying you cannot send a text message from your iPhone and you go ahead and do this anyway, well, you lose your game. The laws will be very clear and if you break them, there will be sanctions.

Sanctions need not be hard, they just have to be just. We all know that people around the world have lost a game because their mobile phone rang. None of these were a cheater. These were people who had a simple distraction. In some cases they had turned their phones off and they just popped on for no reason at all. They are electronic devices and they err. They beeped. Innocent people have suffered. In my view I would empower the arbiters more and forget the rules of the ring. It rings, yes, let’s talk about it. Taking an iPad into the toilet and using it is completely different.

Questioner – How bad is the problem?

Yuri – It is as bad as you can imagine because it threatens chess in perception and undermines it at the core. It is not a question of the number of instances. It is the whole concept that cheating can occur that undermines the sport. We want to block this thing.
In regulations, the playing area is defined and made clear to every player. The arbiter should make explain this, the boundary and limits and then post the information. The problem is the law only says that you are not supposed to leave the playing area. There is no sanction. Let’s add the sanction, if you leave the playing area, you are disqualified.

Another case is of other people passing information to the players. The arbiter must move around. They will have to walk.

Sergei – What about a 200-player open tournament with two arbiters?

Yuri – There is a wrong ratio there. We should increase the number of arbiters. It is clear that the ratio should not be 1 to 100.

The Golden Age of Chess supposedly was in the 50s with Bronstein, Botvinnik etc. Still, you had to wait months to get reports. Today, the Internet has changed all of that – live reports, live commentators, bulletins. This is all for free but at some point we are going to have to charge for these to promote chess. Fifty cents for a whole tournament would make a lot of money for chess. Here Sergei has a cost, the cameras have a cost, and the tournament facilities have a cost. We haven’t found a way to collect the fifty cents. It would help so many problems if we could. Maybe we should open an account and people can start sending in their fifty cents.

Sergei - When do we get the new anti-cheating regulations?

Yuri – They should be passed by the next General Assembly at the Olympiad in Tromso (in ten months). We have to amend the Laws of Chess and this can only done in the General Assembly otherwise we would be finished in a couple of months.
In the regulation, Professor Kenneth Regan has introduced statistical concepts, which will be one of the elements for detecting cheating. If you show a deviation from your expected play that it is highly unlikely with normal happenings, you will be disqualified. The system will be accepted by the international scientific community and will be able to stand up in court.

The ACP now represents all people, who make their living by chess, including players, organizers, chess journalists and reporters and arbiters.

Cheating has evolved very fast. There are more and more instances of cheating. When Professor Reagan started his studies, most accusations of cheating were just witch-hunting. Then, he caught cheaters. Now it is becoming technical. You can buy a small computer and hide one in your toe. It will become slightly hot and you may get cancer. But you will win your game. You can control it with a remote sensor on your thigh and with isometric contractions, you can give signals to it.

It is difficult to have implanted chips. It is not easy to have a chip in your ear and communicate through it. In 2020 this may be possible. This is why we are using the statistical approach. If Sergei plays like Carlsen for a week, that is O.K. If I play like Carlsen for a day, that is highly suspicious because of the level I started at. I probably had aid even if you haven’t caught me using a laptop. This is why the statistical evidence is just one of the elements we use. We have many elements not only the statistical one.
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I think this interview raises many important questions about tournament organization, costs and responsibility, personal freedoms and so forth. The light-hearted discussion of cancer from implants etc did jar a little. I’d be interested in hearing other takes on the interview.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

There was a meeting today of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee. The special guests were IA/FST/IO Israel Gelfer (ISR), the IM and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering of Buffalo University, Kenneth W. Regan (USA), ACP Board Director, Yuri Garrett (ITA), GM Konstantin Landa (RUS) and IA Laurent Freyd (FRA).

.....

Cheating has evolved very fast. There are more and more instances of cheating. When Professor Reagan started his studies, most accusations of cheating were just witch-hunting. Then, he caught cheaters. Now it is becoming technical. You can buy a small computer and hide one in your toe. It will become slightly hot and you may get cancer. But you will win your game. You can control it with a remote sensor on your thigh and with isometric contractions, you can give signals to it.

It is difficult to have implanted chips. It is not easy to have a chip in your ear and communicate through it. In 2020 this may be possible. This is why we are using the statistical approach. If Sergei plays like Carlsen for a week, that is O.K. If I play like Carlsen for a day, that is highly suspicious because of the level I started at. I probably had aid even if you haven’t caught me using a laptop. This is why the statistical evidence is just one of the elements we use. We have many elements not only the statistical one.
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I think this interview raises many important questions about tournament organization, costs and responsibility, personal freedoms and so forth. The light-hearted discussion of cancer from implants etc did jar a little. I’d be interested in hearing other takes on the interview.

Why is nobody talking about using RF detection techniques? Not jamming, but detection. If the cheaters are getting so sophisticated as to use implanted chips, make the players sign a form agreeing that they are at any time subject to RF detection during their games. If there is a regular detection of an RF emission consistently on a player's move, and each emission can be matched up to that player playing Houdini's or Rybka's or Stockfish's #1 move choice, that combination of evidence would be enough. But such a move made without any emission is proof of no cheating going on at all for that particular move.

The statistical method by itself is not sufficient. There must be evidence of actual RF emission going on to have real evidence of cheating. RF detectors are not prohibitively expensive if the cheating is as devastating to chess as everyone suggests.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

Ken Regan Interview
With Sergei Tiviakov

Paris/Elancourt Grand Prix

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Ken - I work in Buffalo, N.Y., which is near Niagara Falls. I am at the State University of New York there. I grew up in Northern New Jersey in the New York City chess area. And first played competitive chess in tournaments run by Bill Goichberg, the famous organizer, who is still running tournaments 40 years later. I was already a master player at the time of the Fischer-Spassky Match in 1972. I was a television commentator for two of the games. I was very active in high school. I played for the United States in two Students’ Olympiads teams and I was U.S. Junior Co-champion in 1977. Played in the 1978 U.S. Championship.

But I also had other loves – academia, computer science, mathematics and even physics for a little while and so when I went to college and graduate school at Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, I played less.

Sergei – Maybe a lot of people don’t know you but have already seen your reports for many years on the ChessBase site with the statistical analysis of different players.

Ken – Well, the ChessBase site has featured more reports from Ivan Bratko and Matej Guid, who one might consider my major competition. My methods are basically more intensive than theirs, in two respects. I have used Rybka as the engine to depth thirteen, where they stopped at ten. I also analyze all the moves, not just the best option but the values of all reasonable options in a position. I have acquired a database of analysis of more than ten million moves, from basically the entire history of top-level chess going back to Greco, in short mode. In my full mode, I have two million moves now.

Sergei – Is this from the first move of the game or from table bases?

Ken – I am going forward, starting at move nine of every game, which is similar to what the Martin Thoresen/CGTE engine competition do. They play book for the first eight moves and then begin at move nine with the computer’s play. I do that because move nine is on average about the earliest when I would give some trust to the computer evaluation of positions.

Not table bases, although I have been on the edge of the creation of the end game table bases. I was also an active background participant in the Kasparov-vs the World Internet Match of 1999. I became the co-author of articles written by Irina Krush, especially analyzing the great Queen ending, which was seven pieces at the end. And now a lot of that has been table-based with perfect play.

Sergei – What is the purpose of the data bases of ten million moves?

Ken – Well, the purpose oddly enough is just a sanity check on my major mathematical work. Suppose I say that it is highly unusual, 10,000 to one odds, for a player to match Rybka seventy per cent, as I did in my report on Borislav Ivanov last January. Then it is important for me to show that I have run everybody’s games in the entire history of chess. I have taken 35 to 40,000 performances and only 13 times has someone matched Rybka more than 70% for more than 120 moves. Bobby Fischer did it once when he beat Larsen. Larsen did it once when he played Board One in the USSR-Rest of the World Match. I wish Bent Larsen had seen this because it is witness that he played with honour on that first board. He lost to Spassky in nineteen moves but he won two of the other games and played very accurately, 70% matching to Rybka. Kramnik has done it three times, Kasparov has done it once, Aronian once and Zoltan Ribli is the second place in the 1979 Warsaw Zonal A. Clearly, he was not cheating with a computer in 1979, so it is very important to have this comparison data so that we know that anything I might project at least has been checked against the entire history of chess.

Sergei – What is the aim of your predictions?

Ken – There are several purposes. I want to emphasize that the real basis for my model is the positive purpose of assessing a player’s skill based on the quality of the decisions they make rather than just the results of their game. If their opponent hangs his queen, they win, but maybe that didn’t have anything to do with the real play. The origin of this was that I was on the PlayChess server, run by ChessBase online, following the Kramnik-Topolov Match, when the accusations over Toiletgate broke. And Frederic Friedel, on the same chat channel, open to 5000 people around the world, appealed for help for evaluating the kind of statistical accusation embodied by Silvio Danailov’s letter. And I figured that I am the type of person who is able to help – a high-rated computer scientist. I set about trying to model how does one understand these accusations.
I was also told a lot of things in the chess world that my research reveals to be wrong. So it is very important for me to do in-depth work to establish what is correct. One of the wrong things I was told was that humans match computers 40 to 45%. No, that is wrong. The best players in the world match computers 57.5 to 58.0%. That sets an important baseline for comparison. I did my work and reached a verdict – a very important principle. How frequently you match depends on how forcing your game is; if your game is very positional, you will match less. For example, Anatoly Karpov won the 1979 Montreal Tournament of Stars even though he matched Rybka under 50%. My model predicts for him 50.9%, so I was close. Whereas, a more attacking player, Lê Quang Liêm, had a minus score in the Aeroflot Open last year, matching 69%, whereas my model predicts 64%; he lives by the sword and dies by the sword but he had a lot of forcing positions, so it is not unusual that he would match. Matching high doesn’t mean that you are winning a lot of games. He lost 4 games.

Players do not understand this principal that the point of match moves from 21 to 28, but every move is forced, otherwise it is mate in one, of course he will play like a computer.

You need a mathematical model in order to distinguish the cases that are not so close. Where maybe there is the best move and then the next best move, one-tenth of a point worse and so on. That is where the mathematics come in. the principal is nothing more than I have just said. I need to determine how forcing the positions are.

I am in Paris for the meeting of the joint ACP-FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee. It is a ten-person committee established in June. We expanded on preliminary work that we have been doing all summer in communications – really mapping out the dimensions of the problem we are facing. My own statistical work is a small component of what we have been talking about. We have legal issues, international uniformity issues, procedural issues definitions of basic terms etc. We are trying to establish a structure, which will enable us to give clear instructions to arbiters at tournaments. Rules to deal with things that happen at tourneys such as happened at Blagoevgrad yesterday with Borislav Ivanov.

We are looking at three different levels of use of statistical work. First, is a hint and information for the arbiter while a tournament is progressing. Second, statistics to support physical observational evidence, which is primary, when it exists. Say, a player is found with a cell phone in his pocket. We don’t know if it was on but I can say that he played like a 3100 player. Third, the most difficult, where the deviation shown by statistics is so high, that it might act alone.

The language of our results doesn’t depend on my specific work; it is the idea of a Z-score, which is very common.

We are at the information-gathering stage now and will try to determine the best procedure.

My work can also be used to disprove cases. It is actually being used much more frequently for that purpose. Against two players accused in the past year, both with 2400 ratings. I showed that in fact that their performance in the tournament was 2400. One was 70 points under his rating.
Well, someone might say maybe he was cheating on just some moves. To which I would reply, he would have to play under 2400 on the other moves to compensate. He had no benefit; cui bono – no benefit. So, that can help resolve cases where they may be unjust accusations. That is also equally important to the Committee.

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

It's interesting watching OTB chess players tearing the game apart. When paranoia and mathematical models become the criteria for deciding the integrity of the players and their games it's time for the sane players who still have a reputation left to leave.

Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad. Euripedes.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

It's interesting watching OTB chess players tearing the game apart. When paranoia and mathematical models become the criteria for deciding the integrity of the players and their games it's time for the sane players who still have a reputation left to leave.

Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad. Euripedes.

Indeed, they might as well all leave chess because the hidden message is this: Do not under any circumstances rise in the chess rankings or even perform in an individual chess match outside of your "expected parameters".

If you do so, you will be investigated for cheating, and Dr. Regan and his cohorts will use their models to determine whether you are guilty. There is no appeal process. They have "the whole history of chess" backing them.

The only exception that might be given is for juniors who are known for improving rapidly and rising in the rankings. But who knows, even they may be now subject to the witch hunt.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

Slides that accompanied Ken Regan’s talk to the 84th FIDE Conference, Tallinn, Estonia on “Skill Rating and Cheating Detection” can be found at:

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/Ta...ngressTalk.pdf

It elaborates on many of the things touched in the interview above. Caution: there is a large amount of mathematics but also intrinsic performance ratings for Carlsen and Fischer, Paul Morphy and Alekhine. There is the Sebastien Feller cheating case, Tartakower’s dictum “The winner is the player who makes the next-to-last blunder” and a bit on rating inflation/deflation.

This is not the full talk but its content in point form.

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

It elaborates on many of the things touched in the interview above. Caution: there is a large amount of mathematics but also intrinsic performance ratings for Carlsen and Fischer, Paul Morphy and Alekhine. There is the Sebastien Feller cheating case, Tartakower’s dictum “The winner is the player who makes the next-to-last blunder” and a bit on rating inflation/deflation.

Of course the Feller case is different.

http://en.chessbase.com/home/TabId/211/PostId/4008370

Use your search on the document for the word "admitted" the several times it appears.

Surely you see a difference? You don't have to reply.

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

Why is nobody talking about using RF detection techniques? Not jamming, but detection.

I don't think it is quite so simple. RF is all over the place these days and transmitters can be of very low power. It can be very hard to detect a local signal against the background of random RF noise unless you already know the frequency of the transmitter. There are a lot of transmissions going on in a Hotel every day, and they might be in the room next door and near the frequency in use by the cheater. Also eventually spread spectrum technology will be low enough priced so that individuals can roll it out for themselves, and then there will be no one single frequency on which the transmission is happening.

The only way to get rid of outside RF noise in our world today is to put your Tournament hall inside a Faraday cage, but if you do that a transmitter inside can't reach outside anyway so problem solved and no detection required. Of course surrounding a tournament hall with fine copper mesh might be a tad expensive...

It won't be long, maybe twenty years or so, when your chess player will be able to put a chip in his body with a chess program on it. I think the cheaters may be bound to win in the long run.

[Miroslav Stefanovic]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

The solution is computer assisted chess. Something like open book exam. Everyone is given his houdini and choses his moves. Try and outplay the other guy with Houdini.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

This suggestion is not as odd as it first appears.

Last December, I posted a thread on ChessTalk about Jan Gustafsson [A Decidedly Odd Simul in Hamburg], who gave a clock simul with sixteen participants. Every two moves they were allowed to use a Houdini suggestion sent to them on their cell phones. Gustafsson won anyway.

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

RF detection and this so called 'you have to prove communication' is completely bogus. Ivanov was using a miniaturized device in his shoes. No need for communication. He was completely offline.

[Tom O'Donnell]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

... It won't be long, maybe twenty years or so, when your chess player will be able to put a chip in his body with a chess program on it. I think the cheaters may be bound to win in the long run.

I agree. Even if they catch Cheater X red-handed it isn't going to help much. People will simply find new ways to cheat. I do think it would be impossible for say an 1800 player to eventually rise to the world's elite via cheating since if you've ever seen a post-mortem analysis online you can certainly see the difference in quality and quantity of commentary with a Kramnik vs say even a strong GM like Christiansen.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

RF detection and this so called 'you have to prove communication' is completely bogus. Ivanov was using a miniaturized device in his shoes. No need for communication. He was completely offline.

The Chessbase article shows a photo of a smartphone crammed into a shoe (the shoe size wasn't specified). On the basis of that evidence alone, both the article author(s) and you are jumping to conclusions, unless you can point to a documented case where someone actually used this technique and successfully cheated with it.

The article provides no such instance. It only hints that it's possible. And yes, the possibility is non-zero, but the likelihood that this technique could have been used by Ivanov in Rapid Chess where he moved every 10 seconds... well, it sounds like one of Maxwell Smart's "Would you believe..." ramblings.

And there's still the fact that the only time Ivanov was tripped up was when the online coverage went down... which again hints at some form of communication to a 3rd party being used.

But if such a Smartphone app is out there, and it is really that fantastically and consistently easy even with only 10 seconds per move, then chess has a problem of gigantic proportion. As I wrote earlier, all chess tournament results are now suspect. Absolutely anyone could be cheating, and any number of players could be cheating.

And that should have any potential sponsor not wanting any involvement in chess.

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

The Chessbase article shows a photo of a smartphone crammed into a shoe (the shoe size wasn't specified). On the basis of that evidence alone, both the article author(s) and you are jumping to conclusions, unless you can point to a documented case where someone actually used this technique and successfully cheated with it.

The article provides no such instance. It only hints that it's possible.

I noticed that when I read the article. There is no actual firm evidence that the player in question was cheating that would hold up in a court of law, and a picture of a smartphone in a shoe is not evidence, only a means of adding spurious emotionally based "credibility" to the story. Not uncommon in journalism of all types, I fear.

But the day when it will be possible to have an entirely closed chess computer that will be impossible to detect in practice is surely not all that far off. Eventually we are going to have to deal with it. It also applies to other games that already get big media coverage, such as poker. Eventually computers will be good enough at that game and impractical to detect that so that high stakes poker will become easy to cheat at. At least we are not alone. The end is nigh. :-(

[Miroslav Stefanovic]

Re: Work of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee

Refusing to take shoes off even though it was part of the rules is no contest plea where he wont disclose details.
Legaly, that proof is quite strong.
We may not be able yo find out how, but he could be banned from chess for a period of time. Being that this is his second offense ( first time he was suspended 4 months for not showing up to test his skill) he should be banned for longer period.