Detecting Chess Cheats Taxes Computers [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

First time accepted submitter jeffrlamb writes "Cheating in live chess matches — fueled by powerful computer programs that play better than people do, as well as sophisticated communication technologies — is becoming a big problem for world championship chess. Kenneth W. Regan is attempting to construct a mathematical proof to see if someone cheated; the trouble is that so many variables and outliers must be taken into account. Modeling and factoring human behavior in competition turns out to be very difficult."

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[jb143]

Didn't read the full story and I doubt anyone really cares, but when I was playing online chess competitions it was usually pretty easy to tell if someone was cheating using a computer. Their moves just "felt" like those a computer would make. Though I guess it would be hard to have another computer program picking up on those same feelings.

[Gameguy]

Use an actual chess board for each player and set up web cams to play over the internet. Video conferencing is pretty common these days.

[TonyTheTiger]

I read this as "Chess cheats taxes" and wondered how much of a grandmaster you have to be to pull that one off.

[jb143]

Use an actual chess board for each player and set up web cams to play over the internet. Video conferencing is pretty common these days.

That's not the problem though. You could still cheat in the same exact way. The cheating is by duplicating your opponents moves on a computer chess program and then whatever the computer responds with, you make that move against your real opponent. Maybe you'd be able to see if they kept turning around and doing something else after each turn but that's about it.

[Gameguy]

That's not the problem though. You could still cheat in the same exact way. The cheating is by duplicating your opponents moves on a computer chess program and then whatever the computer responds with, you make that move against your real opponent. Maybe you'd be able to see if they kept turning around and doing something else after each turn but that's about it.

Two web cameras. One directly over the chess board to view the pieces, another one to see a full shot of the player. You can see if he(or she) is entering moves into another computer.

If these are tournaments I'm assuming there are strict rules for them to count anyway, if it's just by an account playing against another account there's really no way to tell who's even playing against someone if several people would be using the same account. Is it more set up like the honour system now?

[Gameguy]

Okay, I read the article and it's a bit different from what I thought was happening. It's more about chess tournaments in person where a person either goes to the bathroom and uses a program on a phone to see moves or has people in the audience giving him secret signals for what moves to play. To me this shouldn't be an issue at all, just watch out for this stuff and it should be easy to spot.

[jb143]

Heh, I guess I should have read the article as well. Sounds like how people try to cheat at casinos...or even game shows for that matter. I never would have guessed that it would be a problem in real chess tournament play.