THE CHEATING SCANDAL THAT ROCKED MY LOCAL CHESS CLUB
Hello, my fellow fair play followers; and welcome to another edition of the Osaka Papers. Chess cheating has been a hot topic of late, with allegations of cheating being leveled by none other than the Chess World Champion, Magnus Carlsen.
Dear Reader, I trust you know of these accusations and have heard more than enough on Hans Niemann, Magnus Carlsen, Lawsuits and Anal Beads...
If you're like me your non-chess playing NOOB friends have been asking your opinion on Chess Cheating.
Asking you what it is? How is it done? And most importantly how does one prove that someone has cheated?
When these questions inevitably arise, I always tell my friends about The Osaka Chess Cheating Scandal of 2020.
Mayhaps, Dear Reader you have never heard of the Osaka Chess Cheating Scandal of 2020?
No?!?!
Well, you're in luck; allow me to enlighten you.
DISCLAIMER:
The following is my subjective opinion on the Scandal. In no way do I claim to know the absolute truth of what occurred, and this blog is not meant to slander or besmirch the reputation of any individuals, living or dead. The accused is not pictured in this blog; and the names of the participants have been changed.
(There...that should keep me from getting sued for $100 million)
THE CLUB
The Osaka International Chess Congress is not your typical chess club; technically its not even a real chess club. We had no rating system or affiliation, it was really just a bunch of guys and a few girls getting together every few months for an afternoon of chess. We had pizza, beer, music; we even had a shot glass chess set we used for drinking team matches.
It was fun, and in my humble opinion, we had one of the best chess clubs in Japan...
Little did we know of the woe that was about to befall our noble club...
But first, some pics to prove that any of this even happened.
THE LAST TOURNAMENT
Everything was going swimmingly until 2020, a year that will go down in infamy. the UNNAMED VIRUS, OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN had locked down most of Japan, so instead of our usual in-person tourney we decided to hold the event online. It was held on chess.com in correspondence format, participants would have 2 days to make each move.
THE CHESS CHEAT
A word on the accused: from here on in, I will refer to him as CC, short for Chess Cheat. You may be asking why I've decided to call him that? It's because he cheats at chess...O_o
Anyways, CC was a relatively good player, I had both beaten and been beaten by him in our OTB tournaments, but he had a habit of getting into time trouble and would probably be ranked 4th or 5th strongest of the regular attendees.
OUR GAME
There you have it, CC played well, but its not really that suspicious, in fact he actually made a couple of inaccurate moves and plenty of his moves were "excellent", but not the best...
There were however, quite a few of those "excellent" moves, a suspicious mind might surmise that CC was playing the Engine's 2nd best move recommendations...hmmm?...I wonder if that will be significant later??
Well, no big deal, I knew that CC was a good player and although I was disappointed to lose, it was by no means shocking...I wonder how he did in the rest of his games, though??
Well, will you look at those accuracy scores...
It is important to note that accuracy scores are not the way in which chess.com proves cheating, it actually has nothing to do with it. Accuracy scores are a by-product of cheating, they are not proof.
It is however suspicious as hell, for example, according to chess.com a 2400 ELO ranked player would be expected to have an average of 96%, while Super GMs would be closer to 97%. According to CC he was rated 2000 in his home country (this was obviously a lie, but lets just pretend) which would mean he would be expected to have an average of 88%.
So, his 98% average made someone very suspicious, and someone, I'm not going to say who...but someone (it was me...O_o) sent a cheat report request to chess.com...
And you'll never guess what happened next??
ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE
Accusations start flying, name calling, unfriending, blocking... it was pandemonium. At one point, I myself was accused of antisemitism, as if I was the Kanye West of Osaka or something...it was madness.
It effectively divided the club, most abstained from giving any concrete opinion, while others loudly defended CC. There were only two of us who openly accused CC of cheating; myself and the Kiwi.
THE KIWIS' REPORT
One of the members of the group, who I have dubbed the Kiwi, was not satisfied with chess.com banning CC, he wanted to know what that really meant, where was the actual proof the CC had cheated.
Chess.com famously put out a 100 page report on Hans Niemann cheating on their site...the Kiwis' Report was nearly as detailed. In all my years on Facebook I have yet to see such a thoroughly detailed and sophisticated rant.
THE NERDS
The Kiwi enlisted the help of an online community of computer nerds and data crunchers who investigate online chess cheating. He asked them if someone with the above entailed accuracy scores could be playing without assistance...they replied "This is @theofilis (CC), right? I'll scan his tournament games with PGN Spy and see what it comes up with.".
Wait...what? At this point, the Kiwi had not mentioned CC's online handle, they had no way of knowing his name. CC was cheating so much, with such a high accuracy that they didn't even need his name. Chess.com bans 20,000 accounts a year, and CC still stuck out like a turd in a punch bowl.
THE FINDINGS
CC's data:
T1: 52/86; 60.47% (std error 5.27)
Well, what the hell does that mean??
I'm glad you asked.
Simply put T1 is how often we match the top engine move, when we filter all moves played in positions with at least two plausible moves.
So, it does not include all forced or obvious moves. Book moves are not included, if you have a mate in 3, that's not included, if your opponent hangs a piece, that's not included.
Take a typical middle game position, there might be 40 possible legal moves, but most are ridiculous. A Super-GM might choose between 4 or 5 moves, but an Engine's, in relation to T1, only considers two plausible moves as these are the two which give the Engine the slight fractional centipawn advantage that it is looking for.
Centipawn is the unit of measure used in chess to track advantage. Let's say you have to retreat your Bishop. A Super-GM might decide between the a, b or c file, since the Bishop is on the same diagonal and is safe and active in all positions; but when an Engine plays considering its T1, only two options are "plausible" because only two options allow it to maintain the greatest centipawn advantage.
Think of it this way, a human is trying to win the chess game, an Engine is trying to play the most accurate move in relation to centipawn in every position, that is why there is such a huge gulf between Super-Gms and Engines, when it comes to T1.
It is thought that the extreme upper limit of T1 is 50%...CC scored 60%, making him the greatest player in the history of chess with an estimated ELO of 3300...or a Chess Cheat.
You be the Judge.
A COMPARISON
The 2018 Candidates Tournament, the top Super-GMs on the planet fighting for a chance to play for the World Championship.
T1: 887/2133; 41.58% (std error 1.07)
The Sinquefield 2016 tournament, considered the most accurate tournament ever played.
T1: 883/1840; 47.99% (std error 1.16)
Fabiano Caruana's performance at the Sinquefield, considered the most accurate play in the history of chess.
T1: 120/238; 50.42% (std error 3.24)
CC would have crushed all of them...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE
The T1 number is the number filtered for two plausible moves, but there is another number called T2, which shows how often our moves match the top two moves when there are 3 plausible moves.
The upper limit of human play for T2 is thought to be 70%
CC: T2: 60/72 83.33% (std error 4.39)
Fabiano Caruana's Sinquefield performance: T2: 131/183 71.58% (std error 3.33)
T3...same idea as above. The upper limit of human play is thought to be about 80%
CC: T3: 59/66; 89.39% (std error 3.79)
Caruana: T3: 140/168; 83.33% (std error 2.88)
So, a high T2 or T3 might indicate that someone is playing the 2nd or 3rd best Engine move...
The above numbers are for so-called "undecided" positions, where neither side has a significant lead.
What about winning positions? Some Chess Cheats have the ingenious idea of turning off the Engine once they are winning.
WINNING POSITIONS
CC's data
Positions: 50
T1: 16/31; 51.61% (std error 8.98) upper limit of humanity: 50%
T2: 16/20; 80.00% (std error 8.94) upper limit of humanity: 70%
T3: 15/16; 93.75% (std error 6.05) upper limit of humanity: 80%
Impressive...now let's see CC's losing positions.
LOSING POSITIONS
Positions: 0
That's right Dear Reader, CC was never losing, throughout every single game, he was either even or winning.
THE AFTERMATH
Having read what you have just read, one might be forgiven for saying that this constitutes irrefutable... incontrovertible evidence of cheating, it is obvious, no one can contest that CC Cheated during that tournament...
That's right Dear Reader, people still contest this. Those who were on CC's side before the Kiwi's report are still on his side; the report had little to no effect.
There is a lesson here, it doesn't matter how thorough your evidence may be, if your audience refuses to listen then it is all for naught.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CLUB?
Unfortunately, this tale does not have a happy ending; it has been more than two years since the Osaka Chess Cheating Scandal and we are yet to have had another full chess tournament. After being called an anti-Semite, I vowed to never play in a tourney if CC was present.
My actions in reporting CC for cheating were called "Scummy" by one member...What choice did I have but to push the UnFriend button?
But, its not all bad, without our tournaments, I sought out other venues to play OTB, finding the National Chess Society of Japan, at which point I started blogging. So, perhaps this humble blog has the Scandal to thank for its birth.
And that was it, that was the Osaka Chess Cheating Scandal of 2020. Madness, wasn't it?
As always thanks for reading and feel free to share this story with your NOOB friends next time they asked you about chess cheating, I'm sure they will be entertained.
Cheers, SheldonOfOsaka.
