Cheating in Correspondence Chess

[Neil Sullivan]

There's an interesting article by Tim Harding on chesscafe.com today.

http://www.chesscafe.com/Tim/kibb.htm

[Roger Patterson]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

Actually what I found more interesting was the paragraph near the bottom which says that some people have successfully threatened legal action against the ICCF for the inclusion of their name in the ICCF game database. [and their games are now listed as by Anonymous)

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

Actually what I found more interesting was the paragraph near the bottom which says that some people have successfully threatened legal action against the ICCF for the inclusion of their name in the ICCF game database. [and their games are now listed as by Anonymous)

I looked in my CC databases and didn't find any games played by "Anonymous".

That type of chess was discussed some years ago on an international message board. I forget what they call it. Maybe Monkey chess. I never saw that in the scoresheets I got from the players.

Anyhow, when no names are being used it's hard to know. I wonder why Harding wouldn't have mentioned it to the ICCF officials and found out rather than suggesting it might be legal.

Of course, cheating goes on in OTB chess as well. Where it happens doesn't make cheating any more palatable.

[Jonathan Berry]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

Actually what I found more interesting was the paragraph near the bottom which says that some people have successfully threatened legal action against the ICCF for the inclusion of their name in the ICCF game database. [and their games are now listed as by Anonymous)

I'm with Roger. It is a hoary tale, as told by a raconteur (Chernev, Koltanowski ...?) about an amateur who hired two Great Masters (this happened in the days before FIDE GM titles) each to play a postal game. Eventually the matter came to a head when the two Great Masters happened to be in the same place (perhaps for a great tournament), and one remarked to the other what an interesting CC game he was having with an amateur. "Oh? Me, too.".

It seems simple enough to amalgamate the headers A vs C; B vs A to one game with B vs C, assuming there weren't any accidents after one of the games ended. Make for ugly crosstables, though. Were I the arbigod, I'd seriously consider annulling the results of A and hoping it didn't affect the results of the tournament. Inevitably, eventually, given more tournaments, it would. Further sanctions against A seem in order.

[Garland Best]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

I recall this as a mentalist trick. A mentalist challenged 12 grandmasters to a simultaneous exhibition, winning half of the games. This is exactly how he acheived the result.

[Hugh Brodie]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

A friend of mine just resigned all 30 postal games he was playing (mostly with the USCF's Golden Knights). He could tell that a large percentage of his oppenents were using computers - partly from the moves/positions, and partly from the fact that several opponents had postal ratings of 800-900 points above their OTB USCF ratings.

He does not use computer assistance - and still uses postcards to send moves. End of an era for him - he is now going to concentrate on OTB chess.

[Christopher Mallon]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

Of course it's no longer applicable due to the vast increase of computer power/skill, but wasn't there an article a while back in En Passent about how to beat computers in correspondence?

[Dan Scoones]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

Of course it's no longer applicable due to the vast increase of computer power/skill, but wasn't there an article a while back in En Passent about how to beat computers in correspondence?

Let's bring back Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue for a few postal games.

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

A friend of mine just resigned all 30 postal games he was playing (mostly with the USCF's Golden Knights). He could tell that a large percentage of his oppenents were using computers - partly from the moves/positions, and partly from the fact that several opponents had postal ratings of 800-900 points above their OTB USCF ratings.

He does not use computer assistance - and still uses postcards to send moves. End of an era for him - he is now going to concentrate on OTB chess.

Did he resign or did he go into silence? I used to hate when soemone went into silence. First I had to try to find the patser then I had to write all his opponents and tell them he had been involved in an alien abduction.

I've rarely seen a situation where someone who is leading an event resigns all his games. So I figure he was getting popped. 30 games is a lot of games. If you figure his opponents were also averaging that number of games, how many computers would they have to have to grind that many games? Anyhow, with the Golden Knights there were probably mostly U.S. players and postage is up to $1.00 a stamp. Figure about 40 moves a game then multiply it times 30 games and you have a grand total of 1,200 moves at 1 dollar a move. In the chess server and email era that's a lot of money to spend on postage. If he's living in the U.S. the cost would be a bit less.

I remember back in the early 60's. There was a weak player who came around the chess club in Winnipeg. He was quite a strong correspondence player. We could never figure out how he did it.

[Hugh Brodie]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

Did he resign or did he go into silence?

He resigned them all "properly" - he spent his $30 and sent cards/letters to all of them - I believe he apologized to some of them.

[Craig Sadler]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

...

It seems simple enough to amalgamate the headers A vs C; B vs A to one game with B vs C, assuming there weren't any accidents after one of the games ended. Make for ugly crosstables, though. Were I the arbigod, I'd seriously consider annulling the results of A and hoping it didn't affect the results of the tournament. Inevitably, eventually, given more tournaments, it would. Further sanctions against A seem in order.

Harding said he was very sneaky. he did this in a tournament where you could enter multiple sections and did it across sections, so he would be .500 on the whole, but above .500 in some of them

is that any more cheating than prematurely agreeing to a draw OTB though? ;)

[David McTavish]

Re: Cheating in Correspondence Chess

Harding said he was very sneaky. he did this in a tournament where you could enter multiple sections and did it across sections, so he would be .500 on the whole, but above .500 in some of them

is that any more cheating than prematurely agreeing to a draw OTB though? ;)

I apologize to you, Gary and Ken; indeed, TH had retired a couple of years ago. A link posted by Egididus was a link to a two-year old PDF ChessCafe article, the Gambiteer.. not Pacey...