A cheating chess champion and why smartphones are even ruining the pub quiz

As hard as we try, none of us can escape the consequences of ageing. That includes the decline in our mental powers. Nothing illustrates that more clearly than top-flight chess, where the results of the most difficult of all mind-to-mind combat are measured by a completely objective rating system.

The top handful of players, including world champion Magnus Carlsen, are all in their 20s. and, until very recently, no one in their sixth decade had even managed to retain a position in the top 50.

That is, until this apparent biological barrier was broken by a Czech-based Ukrainian-born Grandmaster called Igors rausis. Over the past few years his rating soared with a series of tournament victories, until, at the age of 58, he reached a ranking of 40th in the world.

he became an inspiration for older chess players, who saw him as a model for what they might achieve. It had even pricked my interest, as a club player whose ranking has been slipping down gradually, year after year (I am now 62).

Yet now it has been proved a sham. rausis had been cheating. he used his smartphone in the loo at tournaments, exploiting the fact that chess apps, far stronger than any human, deliver instant, error-free analysis at the press of a button.

Smuggle

It turns out that the chess authorities in his Czech domicile had become suspicious about his age-defying surge in performance, making their concerns known to FIdE, the world chess federation, and those running a tournament in strasbourg in which rausis has been participating.

Thus tipped off, the organisers caught the runaway tournament leader red-handed, sitting in a toilet cubicle, operating his smartphone. some have said it was a gross invasion of the chessplayer’s privacy for them to have released the picture of him sitting on the loo (which has been published worldwide).

But the Grandmaster is not using it in the fashion intended. he is sitting on the seat with the lid down. and his right trouser leg is rolled up, revealing some sort of strapping around his ankle.

This, presumably, is how he managed to smuggle the phone into the tournament arena (in most grandmaster tournaments nowadays, players are forbidden to take such devices into the arena, and may be frisked to ensure compliance).

rausis came out from the cubicle with his hands up, so to speak. he immediately admitted he had been cheating and later told the Czech newspaper Lidovky: ‘I promise this is the end of my career. I have completely ruined my name and also destroyed the trust of all my colleagues and friends.’

If rausis has played his last professional chess game it would be a far more severe consequence than has been meted out in recent years by FIdE to other grandmasters who have cheated in exactly the same way (by consulting chess apps they have either smuggled into a tournament, or hidden before the start of the round in a cubicle).

Typically, FIdE has issued only threeyear bans to these scoundrels, a derisory punishment for a form of fraud which not only gains money at the expense of honest (and better) players, but endangers the reputation of the sport as a whole.

such a three-year ban was imposed on the champion of the former soviet republic of Georgia, Gaioz Nigalidze. In 2014 he had won a very strong tournament in al ain in the United arab Emirates, ahead of a bevy of much higher-ranked grandmasters, taking a first prize of $11,500.

This aroused suspicions: it was in his next event in dubai that the authorities swooped on the cubicle which Nigalidze had been using — and found the smartphone he had hidden there, actually in the process of analysing his current game on one of the chess apps. Yet now Nigalidze, having served his three-year ban, is playing in tournaments again.

Crucial

don’t imagine it is just grandmasters from the former soviet bloc who have been cheating in this way. In the 2010 Chess Olympiad, no less, a cheating ring was run by members of the French team. Its victim was the old enemy: England.

The non- playing French captain, arnaud hauchard had, with the help of computer analysis supplied by another coaching member of the French team, been supplying the best moves to Grandmaster sebastien Feller in his game against the English player david howell.

The match as a whole was a crucial one: had England won against France, we would have moved into joint first place in the Olympiad. But howell lost, enabling the French to draw the match.

Later the vice-president of the French chess federation, Joanna Pomian, discovered hauchard had been communicating the computer choice of best moves to his playing team- mate. after much prevarication, both hauchard and Feller confessed. But although hauchard was given a lifetime ban from the captaincy of the French team, the player involved was given only a three-year ban — partly on the grounds that he was just 19.

Yet david howell — currently England’s top-ranked player — was also just 19 years old at the time. When I spoke with him about it over the weekend (in the wake of the rausis revelations) he was still coldly furious about the whole business. ‘after I lost that game, I was dropped from the team for the rest of the Olympiad. No one knew at the time that I had actually been beaten by a computer program, not my French opponent.

‘But Feller’s behaviour during the game was odd. he seemed unusually nervous and got up frequently from the board. On these occasions I could see him looking around distractedly.’

It turned out that hauchard, who was in the huge Olympiad arena, would ‘tell’ Feller the computer moves by a prearranged form of signalling — and Feller was obviously looking out for this.

Havoc

howell adds: ‘It didn’t occur to me at the time that this was anything to do with cheating. But after the game I looked over it for an hour with the computer and was amazed to find that at every turn he played exactly what the computer recommended.’ david is adamant that his cheating opponent ‘should have been banned for life’.

all this — the abuse of smartphone and computer technology in the competitive arena — is creating havoc beyond the rarified world of top-flight professional chess. a friend, who has long been an enthusiastic pub quiz participant, tells me the fun has been taken out of it by people who nip into the loo during consultation rounds to look up answers via Google on their smartphones.

Obviously, that ruse can’t work when the questions have to be answered instantly. and this point also shows how Igors rausis was an obvious fraud.

While his performance ranking had soared in ‘classical’ chess, where the players have a long time allowance — and certainly enough time to make frequent visits to the loo — in ‘blitz’ chess events, when the players have only five minutes each for all their moves, his ranking remained completely unimproved.

That alone should have given us all a very big hint that the man was using more than his wits to break into the top flight of chess at an age when most grandmasters are considering retirement.

But, you older chess fans and club players, don’t give up trying to become better. It may not be possible, but it’s still the game that enchants us. Besides, if the doctors are right, the best way to delay mental decline is to keep thinking hard.

so it’s in our own interests — in any form of mental test — not to cheat by using a smartphone.