Sunday 12 February 2012

A solution to computer cheating

Yesterday at Street Chess we had two visitors who may have provided a solution to the problem of computer cheating. As it is very easy to hide a portable chess computer on your person (or have a program running on a concealed smart phone) the question has been, how to detect such a device. Metal detectors are pretty expensive, while strip searching players is both time consuming, and possibly distasteful.
The answer is "Morph Suits". If each player is required to wear an official tournament "Morph Suit" then there are very few places to hide electronic equipment. And as the suits cover the face, it may also solve the problem of players intimidating their opponents with aggressive facial expressions. But given the tight fitting nature of the outfits, this intimidation may instead take other forms.
IM Andrew Brown has also sent me a link showing the "Morph Suit" in action. It is a youtube video and you can see it here. While the suits aren't as stylish as the one in the photo, it does show how practical they are.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

They were still into it some hours later. Aussie flag was happily drinking beer through the suit. Gross.

Anonymous said...

Apparently everyone would feel inadequate if you made the Booth wear a skin tight suit.

Anonymous said...

Morph was a nifty computer program by Levinson (then also Danny Walker, and Ryan Weber in later years). Probably too academic to ever be competitive, but its value was not just that.