THE WORLD of British chess has been rocked after a grandmaster claimed the game of kings was riddled with cheats.
Daniel Gormally, 38, suggested that the game is facing an epidemic of players popping to the lavatory during competitions and using mobile telephones to work out their next move.
In the past few years, mobile telephone apps, with names such as Droidfish and Shredder, have been developed that make it easy to play chess on the move and analyse complex positions with so-called “chess engines”. But despite handsets being banned in most tournaments on the English circuit, Mr Gormally said there is nothing to stop players hiding in cubicles with them.
Internationally, chess has faced several cheating scandals in recent years involving elaborate methods and technology.
But, so far, none of the toplevel players in England have been accused of calculating acts of deception in games.
Mr Gormally, from Durham, said: “There’s a few players in English chess whose ‘improvement’ I’ve found a bit suspicious, to say the least. But I won’t name any names.
“The worrying thing is the amount of chess players who cheat at chess, a game with very little money in it.”
Mr Gormally, ranked 13 in the UK by the English Chess Federation, went on to say that he believes chess is no different to sports such as cycling which have been embroiled in major drug-taking scandals.
“The problem is that computers are so powerful,” he added.
“If somebody wants to go to the lavatory once or twice in a match you wouldn’t be suspicious, but they could easily look at their phone and gain a significant improvement.
“I don’t think it happens at the top level because players have press conferences after their matches and have to explain all their moves.
“But it’s at the lower level where it is a problem.” In July 2013 Borislav Ivanov, a Bulgarian player, was suspended from playing for four months by his national federation after refusing to prove his skills in a test.
It had been found that most of his moves matched those of the leading computer chess analysis programmes.
Two years earlier the French chess federation suspended three players, including the national team captain, after it was alleged they used mobile text messages, a remote chess computer and coded signals to beat the opposition at the 2010 Chess Olympiad.
The match between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi at Baguio City in the Philippines in 1978 became notorious for the accusation from Korchnoi’s camp that Karpov was receiving messages when he was brought a yoghurt.