The Biggest Cheating Scandals in Chess

The Biggest Cheating Scandals in Chess

After Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup, everyone and his grandmother have been discussing whether Hans Niemann had cheated in the tournament or not. Even though, so far, there have been no direct accusations against him or evidence presented, the chess world found itself divided. Some people see nothing suspicious, point out that one is innocent until proven guilty, and warn against potentially ruining a promising player's career. Others believe that there is no smoke without fire and claim that something shady is going on with Hans' play, post-game interviews, and unbelievable progress over the last couple of years:

It is more or less unheard of to transition from being a 2400+ player to hitting 2700 on the live rankings in two years.

The American chess prodigy seems to be deeply obsessed with chess, saying that it's his entire life. This statement is easy to believe once you realize that he played almost 260 games last year, which is twice the norm of any other chess fanatic.

Hans made his passionate and highly emotional statement in an interview after the fifth round:

It would be interesting to hear what Magnus Carlsen has to say on this topic, even though, clearly, as a public person, he has serious legal constraints, not allowing him to speak his mind freely on the matter.

Anyway, let's revisit some of the loudest chess scandals of the past that involved cheating or cheating accusations. We will restrict the article to over-the-board chess since cheating scandals occur way too often online. Obviously, it is by no means exhaustive, as there have been too many accidents of this sort to track down them all.

1972: Being shocked by the American's stellar performance, the Soviet chess delegation demands Bobby Fischer's chair be searched for electronic devices. All they found were two dead flies.

1978: Viktor Korchnoi accused Karpov's team of sending his signals by offering him yogurt of different colors. According to Korchnoi, after consuming the yogurt, Karpov used to get an insane energy boost and started playing like a machine. Karpov fondly recalled how good the product was but mentioned that its recipe had been lost. Initially, it was developed for spacemen in a secret Soviet research lab.

Korchnoi-Karpov and Karpov-Kasparov matches were characterized by wars between hypnotists/parapsychologists, who were employed by the players to boost their performances and potentially affect the opponents negatively. It is interesting that even though nowadays some top players do consult sports psychologists, such duels are no longer a thing.

1980s: Kasparov sacked a few of his seconds for allegedly passing his opening preparation to Karpov for a financial reward.

2005: When Veselin Topalov demonstrated one of the best performances ever in chess history in the World Championship in San Luis, there was plenty of gossips that he must have used computer assistance. Notably, one of the participants, Alexander Morozevich, put Rybka in first place in his Chess Oscar vote, Hydra in second, and Topalov's manager, Silvio Danailov, in third. As to Topalov, Moro didn't include him in the top 10 best players of the year.

2006: Toiletgate. It was probably the biggest cheating scandal to this day. Veselin Topalov's manager accused Vladimir Kramnik of going to the bathroom too often and allegedly receiving computer assistance there. The evidence? There was some sort of weird cable in the room, but nothing special. Interestingly enough, Magnus Carlsen was one of the Grandmasters who expressed their support to the big Vlad back then.

2007: A few Grandmasters accused GM Stanislav Novikov of cheating at Aeroflot Open. Stanislav lashed back by challenging his offenders to a chess match. The players in question were GMs Alexei Korotylev, Sergei Shipov, Vladimir Belov, Mikhail Krasenkow, and Ian Nepomniachtchi.

2008: GM Oleg Korneev lost a tough game in Gjovik Open, Norway, against WGM Olga Dolzhikova, rated over 300 points below him, and went on to publicly accuse her of cheating, claiming that she kept spending a lot of time in the restroom and ended up playing the first choices of Rybka. Notably, he got suspicious early in the game and unplugged the electronic board to make sure there was no transmission! However, the tournament organizers deemed Olga's explanations convincing enough and didn't disqualify her.

2009: Super GM Shakhryar Mamedyarov withdrew from Aeroflot Open after losing a sharp tactical battle as White in 21 moves to GM Igor Kurnosov (who, unfortunately, died in a car crash a few years later). Shakh claimed that his opponent behaved in a suspicious way, taking his jacket with him and going for a walk outside the playing hall after each move. Nevertheless, after carefully reviewing the case, the arbiters didn't find anything suspicious in Kurnosov's behavior.

2010: At the Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansyisk, the captain of the French team, GM Arnaud Hauchard, used to receive computer moves from IM Cyril Marzolo and sit at different tables, passing the information to GM Sebastian Feller, a member of the French Team. The players were found guilty and received bans from 1.5 to 3 years. Sebastian Feller still plays chess, but his rating is considerably lower than his peak of 2668. This case is remarkable in the sense that a few titled players were involved in the scheme, and Feller was the highest-rated player in history so far to be caught red-handed cheating in an over-the-board game.

2011: Ukrainian doctor Andriy Slusarchuk played a blindfold exhibition match against Rybka 4 and won! This ridiculous feat and an absurd explanation of how it happened caught the attention of chess experts. After a careful investigation, plenty of charges of fraud and forgery transpired.

2012-2013: Bulgarian player Borislav Ivanov made international news by drastically improving his play and beating a few grandmasters. Even though there was no direct proof, he was stripped of his FIDE Master title, removed from the FIDE rating list, and banned by the Bulgarian Chess Federation. It was one of the first cases when statistical analysis and special software were used to determine whether a player was guilty or not. Check out the Wiki article if you haven't been following his life story since then (or at all).

2014: Wesley Vermeulen was caught consulting a smartphone in the toilet and was banned by the Dutch Chess Federation and FIDE for a year. Since then, he has increased his rating somewhat, peaking at 2257.

2015: Georgian Grandmaster Gaioz Nigalidze was caught consulting a smartphone in the washroom. He was stripped of the GM title and banned from competition for three years.

The same year, WGM Michaela Sandu was accused of cheating by a few dozen players who signed two open letters after she won the first five games at the European Women's Chess Championship. No evidence was presented, and the tournament proceeded as normal. In the end, Sandu finished the event with a modest result of 6/11. The winner was one of Sandu's accusers, Natalia Zhukova, who scored 9.5 points.

2016: Sergei Aslanov was expelled from Moscow Open for hiding a smartphone in the toilet under a loose tile behind a drainpipe. He was suspended for one year and, apparently, has given up on competitive chess since then, remaining rated 2341.

2017: GM Evgeny Solozhenkin accused IM Bibisara Assaubayeva of cheating in one of the junior chess championships based on the conversation with his daughter, WGM Elizaveta Solozhenkina, who drew a game against Bibisara. There were numerous court battles around this case, some of which are mentioned in the Wiki article.

2019: Latvian Grandmaster Igor Rausis was also caught using a smartphone in the bathroom. He admitted his wrongdoing and announced his retirement from chess.

2020: WFM Patrycja Waszczuk got a 2-year ban for allegedly using a mobile phone in toilet during one of the rounds of the Ustron Chess Festival.

In the video above, shot back in 2015, GMs Daniil Dubov and Vladislav Tkachiev show how easy it is to cheat in modern chess.

As technology keeps evolving, it is becoming more and more difficult to combat cheating in chess, especially when large prizes are at stake. At most open tournaments, the arbiters don't take the issue seriously enough, carelessly checking the players' bags with a metal detector (if at all!) and advising them to turn in smartphones before the round. Still, it is not particularly difficult to sneak in a mobile device, not to mention that earphones and more advanced devices are a pain to detect. And what are we going to do if brain implants become a thing? Will there be full scans to make sure there are no foreign objects inside your body? The future will tell.

Further reading: the "Historical" section of the Wiki article about cheating in chess offers additional interesting information on other such cases.

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