Chess ’N Math Association Canada and the Max Chess Academy sued over cheating claim

[John Coleman]

You are assuming wrongly that Neil is trying to generate good ideas for the CFC. He is but an agent of chaos doing the work of his Dark Lord.

No Vlad, he's not that important. Just a disordered mind.

[Neil Frarey]

These don't look like good ideas, Neil. Why should the CFC insert itself into a dispute in which it has no direct involvement?

Because Olga says ... We need Cecil Rosner to 'fix' this journalist fast.

We? Olga seems rather loose with use of the word ... we.

She reps the CFC ... we.

I'll wait...

[Kerry Liles]

Because Olga says ... We need Cecil Rosner to 'fix' this journalist fast.

We? Olga seems rather loose with use of the word ... we.

She reps the CFC ... we.

I'll wait...

She did not mention the CFC so I (and likely everyone else but you) took the "we" to mean "those who would like to correct journalists".
Back to photoshop Neil...

[Neil Frarey]

She did not mention the CFC so I (and likely everyone else but you) took the "we" to mean "those who would like to correct journalists".
Back to photoshop Neil...

LOL, isn't she VP of the CFC we?

So when Olga says ... We ... she means the CFC.

Circle the wagons, Kerry et al.

...

Where's that WORDS MATTER poster when I need it, ha!


.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Where is Jackie the Tokeman now? That was a day when the trolls still had some substance.

[Vlad Drkulec]

No Vlad, he's not that important. Just a disordered mind.

We've had all too many of those in chess though thankfully mostly in the past.

[Peter McKillop]

Because Olga says ... We need Cecil Rosner to 'fix' this journalist fast.

We? Olga seems rather loose with use of the word ... we.

She reps the CFC ... we.

I'll wait...

Keep on waiting little buddy.

[Olga Mushtaler]

Neil Frarey
Let me clarify: by 'WE,' I meant the participants of this chat who are speculating about the case—a group of people participating in this chat. Sorry if my wording misled you.

[Peter McKillop]

You are assuming wrongly that Neil is trying to generate good ideas for the CFC. He is but an agent of chaos doing the work of his Dark Lord.

Correction: I'm not assuming anything about Neil. Just because I tell him that a couple of his ideas aren't good imo, it doesn't logically follow that I think he's trying to generate good ideas for the CFC.

[Neil Frarey]

Just a heads up ... I have invited Susan Lazaruk to join your commentary.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Just a heads up ... I have invited Susan Lazaruk to join your commentary.

Run, Susan. Run far away.

[Hans Jung]

A Gell-Mann amnesia effect example.

Thanks Tom. I'll use that phrase from now on. Makes people think a bit more (maybe?)

[Vlad Drkulec]

Run, Susan. Run far away.

In case you don't take that advice, there are a few problems with the article as presented. I am president of the Chess Federation of Canada. I am knowledgeable in the area of detecting chess cheating to the point that I was a presenter as part of a seminar on the subject at the historic Marshall Chess Club that included the president of the U.S. Chess Federation and Ken Regan, the world authority on computer chess cheating.

The individual presented as counter evidence to the Ken Regan analysis is a rusty national master who has been largely inactive for the past decade and a half aside from playing in a fast time control event event last year where he had what most of us would consider a challenging result with a 1500 performance. Clearly he was rusty. Ken Regan is the world authority on detecting cheating used by the International Chess Federation, the online platforms and just about every chess federation around the world. He does not usually charge for this analysis and is very generous with his efforts. There is no one in the world who knows as much as Ken Regan on this subject. He is a person that is very interested in chasing the truth.

I have no dog in this fight as Chess and Math is a separate organization but this is the type of scenario that we have avoided in the past by carefully considering how we approached similar situations. For one thing when we did online championships we required two cameras at different angles which we monitored over zoom. I was the head of the fair play committee in that instance.

I have not seen the games in question, but when my conclusions about other situations were compared to Ken Regan's we have came to the same result though his conclusions were far more authoritative as he has more sophisticated tools and more knowledge than I do. I would tend to trust Ken Regan more than I would trust a random national master which is quite a bit lower on the hierarchy of chess accomplishment than an international master which is what Ken Regan is and when you add in the world authority on online cheating credentials, it is not even close.

In the case of the Chess Federation of Canada, if we caught a youngster in similar circumstances we would likely not institute a life time ban (four months to a year most likely, depending on age) but we would not have allowed him to continue into the national championship. He would have been entitled to a hearing probably with our board of directors.

We had a case around 2020 where a player of a similar age, playing in a CFC online event was accused of using assistance. He had beaten a player who was higher rated in the real world ratings but actually was lower rated online. We had a tribunal consisting of our Executive Director, myself and another board member who are all experienced players and tournament directors. The game that he played was in a pawn structure and opening that I was quite familiar with having studied it quite extensively and even having taught it with quite a few of my own students. In short, the accused played okay but not particularly well. He had played an obvious tactic which immediately won the game and which most of my young students who were much weaker would have also found. I tried the position with every one of my students, and even the very young ones found the winning moves. He had studied the pawn structure with a grandmaster at a chess camp. His opponent played very badly. Very, very badly. The vote was 2-1 to ban him for four to six months but I was the one disagreeing and so I took it to the board of directors and after presenting my analysis we elected not to suspend him. He was actually higher rated in his online rating than that FIDE master that he had beaten. He was also a fairly strong player to the point that the upset was not all that remarkable given the very bad play by the nominally stronger player.

We would also not suspend a player from in person play for an online infraction. The need for due process was why we did not suspend the player despite the ad hoc tribunal's conclusion. I met the player and his mother two years later at the Canadian Youth Chess Championship. They both thanked me profusely for believing him.

It could easily have been us facing a similar court case if we didn't exercise some safeguards and give the player the right to appeal the decision and due process though I don't necessarily think that there was not at least the option presented in the case that was outlined in the article.

The youngster from the article is not a prodigy by all evidence available.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

We had a case around 2020 where a player of a similar age, playing in a CFC online event was accused of using assistance.

I don't think that at that time K. Regan helped us. Has he crunched those games later?

[Vlad Drkulec]

I don't think that at that time K. Regan helped us. Has he crunched those games later?

No. That was all us.