Friday 16 May 2014

FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee - Draft Proposal

The FIDE/ACP Anti-Cheating Committee has produced a draft proposal which will be presented to the FIDE Congress in Tromso in August 2014. It is important to note that this is a draft paper and can be amended before the Congress. Also the proposals contained in the paper require the approval by the General Assembly before they take effect.
You can read a general overview of the paper here, and download a full copy of the paper from the link on that page.

(I am the current secretary of the FIDE Anti-Cheating Commission, and was one of the authors of this paper)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

To my mind there are two problems.

The first is the professional cheat who will come tooled up with hidden devices or sophisticated move communication methods. Statistical methods might detect these, but there's an immense danger of false accusations against players whose only crime is that they "got lucky" or were capable of playing well above their rating.

The second is the amateur cheat. That's someone who will play most of their moves legitimately, but will sneak off every so often to consult their friend, or more likely their electronic device or their friend with an electronic device. Detecting this in the absence of physical observation is a lot more difficult.

The proposal of defaulting amateur players merely for having a phone in their possession is offensive, since it accuses players of being cheats. The likely response, at least in those Federations that don't routinely rate for FIDE all games, is likely to tell FIDE what it can do with its proposed regulations.

Unknown said...

Well, I hear your arguments Anon, but I really don't agree. I thought and commented back a dozen years ago when the first cases of apparent cheating were appearing. I thought then that a wholesale rule change was an over-reaction to a rare phenomenon. I am afraid that the passage of time has not provided evidence to support that view anymore. The integrity of chess, and the regard in which chewss is held, is now under serious threat because of cheating. FIDE must act to presertve the integrity of the game. A mobile phone ban is a cheap enforcable transparent rule. It is a good idea.

Anonymous said...

A mobile phone ban is a ban on amateur player participation. Feel free to advocate it, but don't expect entrants to tournaments or participation in leagues that enforce it.

It's always been the case that in OTB chess, taking advice from external sources has been forbidden. Feel free to accuse all amateur players of cheating but don't have expectations that you will get any entrants to leagues or tournaments run under that assumption.

Unknown said...

Well OK good anon, that is a good way to advance the debate. If I understand your position, it is that leagues competitions and tournaments which enforce this rule will shrink and those that do not will blossom. That is a tesatable hypothesis now isn't it? You see we do know there is a contrary tendency. I think there are known cases of GMs refusing to compete when a cheating 2300 player was playing. And as for the mobile phone itself, I was employed for several years in a capacity where I had to go into high security rooms. No mobile phones. Everyone just did it. It is manageable.

Anonymous said...

It is indeed a testable hypothesis. I would remind advocates that extension of FIDE rating to all forms of chess is far from being a done deal particularly in countries with long traditions of chess. Amateur chess and high security rooms are not compatible. Look how many competitions enforce zero time defaults to see that top down edicts from FIDE meet with resistance.