Top French Chess Players Suspended For Cheating 295
cf18 writes "The French chess federation has suspended three top players for violating sporting ethics at a chess olympiad in Siberia last September. The allegation claims while the first member was playing, a second member would watch the game via internet, use software to find the best move, and send it to the third member via SMS. The third member would then sit himself at a particular table in the competition hall. Each table represented an agreed square on the chess board."
Hand gestures (Score:5, Insightful)
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You wouldn't need a whole lot of signals. It could very easily be as simple as "yes or no" signals. At this level of play you are far beyond "wondering which piece to move where." Problems are much more likely to present themselves in terms of "does this line lead to some tactical trouble that I don't see?" Chess has some pretty weird aspects that stem from its simplicity.
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That's why I stick to checkers. It's too complicated for me to have any problem playing it.
Re:Hand gestures (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA:
The alleged strategy was discovered by French chess federation Vice President Joanna Pomian, who spotted a text message on the mobile phone of one of the three players while the French team was involved in a game.
Re:Hand gestures (Score:5, Informative)
They were even dumber. The Independent [independent.co.uk] wrote:
The alleged manipulations came to light because Mr Marzolo did not have a mobile telephone of his own. As a result of financial problems he had been barred by all mobile companies. His telephone had been loaned to him by another senior player for whom he once worked, Joanna Pomian, the vice president of the federation.
During the championship, she accidentally discovered a message from Mr Hauchard in Russia which read: "Hurry up and send the moves." She checked the records of the line and found Mr Marzolo had sent 180 messages to the other accused men during the competition. Most consisted of telephone numbers.
Re:Hand gestures (Score:5, Funny)
It's a Rebecca Black Troll!
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Either way, I'm immune to it now. I actually somewhat enjoy that song now. I also enjoy 'Dragostea din Tei' (The song from the Numa Numa Dance). They're just so...damn...catchy!
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this makes it better [youtube.com]
Not like other sports. (Score:3, Funny)
My first thought, how would steroids help in chess? Guess chess isn't like other sports.
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Steroids, no. Other drugs, maybe. Top level chess games can last for 5-6 hours on end, and I could see players taking some sort of aid to keep concentration going for that long a period.
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Adderall might help though.
Re:Not like other sports. (Score:4)
Is chess solved, or were these guys midlevel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Has the state of the art in fact advanced more significantly than I thought, or were these guys sufficiently low-level players that some quite ordinary software was deemed sufficiently likely to be better? I'd assume that you wouldn't take the risk of being caught cheating unless you were fairly confident that it would boost your odds of winnning, which would imply a belief that you were substantially worse than whatever software they had access to.
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New Yorker article Mar-21: "I asked Carlsen if he would be interested in a Deep Blue-type contest, and he said no -- it would discourage him."
Longer quote here. [slashdot.org]
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They don't 'see' the position, they have to do math to get it. Having said that, I do use the computer to practice and analyse my games.
And, pray tell, what do you think the brain does when it "sees" a position? There's no such thing as insight raining down from the heavens like manna. Even your brain needs to first realize how the board looks, then cross-reference that with that else it has seen in the times past and then choose an appropriate action it deems worthwhile.
The approach to steps 2 and 3 may be slightly different, as the human brain most likely uses more heuristics, but in the end, both computers and brains follow the same logi
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They don't 'see' the position, they have to do math to get it
Which is different to what's going on in the depths of your mind how? The brain may not crunch numbers exactly how a computer does, but it still comes up with an output based on its inputs.
I get that playing chess against a computer is different to playing against another person, but I don't think it's about the math.
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Also, chess masters DO have a database. It's called "the hundreds of games they've played and the thousands of games they've studied". Sure, a computer's is slightly larger, but a chessmaster can identify what made which move important.
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our brain has a very slow clock, on the order of kilohertz.
It's actually only 2 or 3 hertz.
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The question 'are computers better at chess than humans' is as meaningful as 'are submarines better at swimming than humans'
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"The program doesn't know how to play chess [,,,] every chessgame in the world that can beat me (and there are heaps of them) use databases."
Are you implying that you don't use your own database, that is, your memory? That you "make up" each game from the beginning out of just chess rules?
Wouldn't you recognize that a human player with better memory and more "flying hours" than you and able to apply that to his adavange so he would consistently win you is a better player than you?
I'd add more: for all the "
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"You can't compare a grandmaster that has a fabulous direct knowledge of 5000-15.000 games to a database that has every important game since the invention of notation in them. "
But of course I can! And so do you. That's not the problem; the problem is that you don't consider the comparation to be "fair".
"My own database at this moment holds over 15 million games, That is far beyond what any human is capable of."
But of course it is! And the computer uses it to its advantage when playing chess so well that
Re:Is chess solved, or were these guys midlevel? (Score:4, Funny)
You can't compare a grandmaster that has a fabulous direct knowledge of 5000-15.000 games to a database that has every important game since the invention of notation in them. My own database at this moment holds over 15 million games, That is far beyond what any human is capable of.
Wait, so you're an AI that has learned to troll slashdot about chess?
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"You clearly don't understand how computer chess works. They win because they look ahead very far into the game, not just by having knowledge of previous games."
Not even that. Modern chess programs are a tad more "clever" than that: the difference is not how "far" they can look ahead (that's a trivial problem only too CPU intensive to be currently tractable) but how far they *don't* look ahead, that is, how cleverly they can throw away movement branches, so they don't expend time computing them based on st
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You just don't know what you are talking about. Computer chess players look millions of moves into the future. Seriously, just spend a few minutes on a web search.
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Re:Is chess solved, or were these guys midlevel? (Score:4, Funny)
OK - you're either fantastically stupid or you're just pretending not to understand him (which is also fantastically stupid). Obviously he didn't mean a chain of moves 1,000,000 moves long. He meant the computers consider millions of individual moves. Which they do. Some of those moves might be 10 moves away, the bulk of them will be much closer. And you, despite obviously doing some Googling, apparently haven't given up on the idea that consulting a database is in any way the prime technique a computer chess program uses (beyond the opening).
All in all, this article has had some of the stupidest, most depressing Slashdot comments I've ever seen. It's like reading the comments on a Youtube video.
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Don't you get tired of being wrong?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 [wikipedia.org]
"At the same tournament in 2004, Aronian played two Fischer Random Chess games against the Dutch computer chess program The Baron, developed by Richard Pijl. Both games ended in a draw. It was the first ever man against machine match in Fischer Random Chess."
"The chess program Shredder, developed by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen from Düsseldorf, Germany, played two games against ZoltÃn AlmÃsi from Hungary; Shredder won 2-0."
T
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You miss the point. There were GM players at the early tournaments, and the guys who won them played computers and either drew or lost. At later tournaments Rybka dominated among the computers, so it as at least as strong as the earlier ones that won or drew against very good players.
So your claim that a 2000-2100 player would beat Rybka at Fischer Random is just more bullshit. You don't know what you are talking about, as you've demonstrated over and over again. I'm not replying to you any more.
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They do both (at leas Deep Blue did IIRC). Look at databases and calculated moves ahead.
I'd be interested what would happen if they added another row or two to the chess board, who would cope better, the human or the computer (I really don't know).
Chess is a rather limited game compared to something like a full-size Go board. With board games, you could increase the size to a point (which is still outstandingly small relatively) where it becomes prohibitive for a classical computer to both calculate or ev
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There are chess players that are specialised playing chess against computers. They are supposedly better than most computers/applications. But that's different than playing any human chess player. So I think it's quite likely that a computer could beat a grandmaster if he thought he was playing a human. And don't forget that there were two others that could e.g. discard some computer moves. That said, that's what I heard in college, and that's already 10 years (!) ago.
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"Has the state of the art in fact advanced more significantly than I thought...?"
Apparently, yes. New Yorker article last week (Mar-21) profiling current chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen (21-years old, ranked #1 in world last year):
"But processors are now so powerful that no human stands a chance of winning a match. I asked Carlsen if he would be interested in a Deep Blue-type contest, and he said no -- it would discourage him. Among the chess elite, the idea of challenging a computer has fallen into the realm
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Given the amount of game-studying undertaken by people sufficiently advanced in chess to actually have an opinion, it'd be pretty tricky to blind such a test properly; but I just have to wonder whether a 'weird computer move I can't understand' would be described in completely different terms by somebody who thinks that ther
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The state of the art took a quantum leap forward about 8 or 9 years ago. There were some new ideas in the programs that jumped the ratings on typical pc level hardware by something like 3-400 points.
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I would mod this up if I could. "Insightful" and concise. 5-stars.
Computers are better than humans? (Score:2)
I know specialist systems (big blue) can beat anyone, but are standard PC-based chess programs really better than players at this level?
(If so, maybe time for everyone to switch to Go?)
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It mention the chess program used is called "Firebird". From google there are many reference for it in various chess forums as an open source chess engine but I can't find an official page in English.
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Well, people havent quit running competitions, even though cars are much faster.
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Yes. In fact, in 2009, an HTC Touch smart phone running Pocket Fritz 4 won the Copa Mercosur tournament in Buenos Aires, with a score of 9.5 out of 10, and a ELO performance of 2898.
On big multi-core PCs, modern programs have ELO ratings of > 3100, while the top human players have ratings just over 2800.
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Yes.
The last big Machine-Man match was in 2006 which was Kramnik against Deep Fritz. Wikipedia says the following about the hardware: "Deep Fritz version 10 ran on a computer containing two Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs (a Xeon DC 5160 3 GHz processor with a 1333 MHz FSB and a 4MB L2 Cache)". Kramnik lost this match. Imagine what a $500 computer now would do. (Plus chess engines have improved a lot as well.)
Just try yourself. The best chess engine currently is free (as in beer): Houdini. Furthermore, you need
Nice stunt (Score:3)
While I despise such cheating in general, I still have to say that this is a nice stunt. I like the coding through seating step.
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According to the article in the Independent (cited in another post about 10 min. before yours), it was actually movements between the tables that conveyed the moves. The confederate receiving the text would stand by the table corresponding to b3, for example, then move to the table corresponding to b4, signifying that the computer's move was b3-b4.
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It's very easy. There are 64 squares on a chessboard, so if you have 64 chairs you can just sit in one of the 64 chairs and that's all it takes. With less chairs, you can do other things if needed: cross your legs or don't, lean back or don't, and so on. Just crossing your legs and leaning back cuts the number of chairs required down to 16, and that's assuming that you actually need to account for every single square, which you probably don't actually need to do in a real game.
Now if you're thinking that a mere board location doesn't always tell you what piece to put there (depending on the current arrangement) that's accounted for by the fact that these guys actually do know how to play chess so they can decide on the best move themselves after being directed to the proper square to land on.
It must have looked like wizards' chess. Ron sacrifices himself so Harry can checkmate whilst reminding Hermione not to move.
Spotted by their own federation (Score:3)
It's wise, and also fortunate, that they solved this problem in house.
Top chess players are douchebags (Score:5, Interesting)
I enjoy a good game of chess myself, on occasion. However, at the top level, chess is populated almost entirely by gigantic douchebags. I'm not surprised cheating went on. Look at some of Bobby Fischer's early matches. And hey, Kasparov isn't above cheating, either. His opponent didn't say anything because she knew he'd use his reputation to destroy her and anything she said.
"An interesting example of taking back moves at the highest level of OTB chess occurred recently at the elite 1994 Linares super tournament. It's claimed that there is video tape showing that PCA World Champion Garry Kasparov, while playing Judit Polgar, moved a knight to a square which would have cost him the exchange. Apparently, even though he had released the piece, he picked it up again and moved it to another square and went on to win the game." Link to more [controltheweb.com].
Bobby Fischer, the greatest American player ever, idolized Hitler and hated Jewish people, and cheered 9/11 on his radio show. Sample quote: "This is a wonderful day. Fuck the United States. Cry, you crybabies! Whine, you bastards! Now your time is coming." Don't think he was alone in the chess world, either, he had a lot of friends: as Gudmundur G. ThÃrarinsson, the man who arranged the famous "Cold War" match against Spassky in Iceland, said at Fischer's funeral, "In the fullness of time, history will judge the United States harshly for its treatment of Robert James Fischer."
I leave with this piece about chess, written in the 1500s.
"Chess is certainly a pleasing and ingenious amusement, but it seems to have one defect, which is that it is possible to have too much knowledge of it, so that whoever would excel in the game must give a great deal of time to it, as I believe, and as much study as if he would learn some noble science or perform well anything of importance; and yet in the end, for all his pains, he only knows how to play a game. Thus, I think a very unusual thing happens in this, namely that mediocrity is more to be praised than excellence."
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And I just ran out of mod points. You win teh internets for tonight!
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Could you give the source for that last quotation? It sums up more eloquently than I ever could the reasons I stopped playing.
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I leave with this piece about chess, written in the 1500s.
"Chess is certainly a pleasing and ingenious amusement, but it seems to have one defect, which is that it is possible to have too much knowledge of it, so that whoever would excel in the game must give a great deal of time to it, as I believe, and as much study as if he would learn some noble science or perform well anything of importance; and yet in the end, for all his pains, he only knows how to play a game. Thus, I think a very unusual thing happ
Re:Top chess players are douchebags (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it did got rid of smallpox. And polio. And famine. And backbreaking farm work. And cities get clean drinking water and their waste is purified before being released.
But apart from medicine, plentiful food, clean water, warm houses, comfortable clothes, fast transportation, long-distance communication, contraceptives, weather forecasts, food preservation, insect repellants, electric light, sunglasses, robots, tractors, waste disposal, fire, wheel and beer... what has science ever done for us?
It disturbs me that Monty Python seems to be such an accurate portrayal of the world.
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We don't have overpopulation, we are well within the carrying capacity of this world. And with population growth leveling off everywhere, we'll also stay within it.
As I said, famine has been ended in industrialized countries. It still occurs in developing ones like it did here, and for the same reason: their technology - applied science - hasn't gotten good enough yet.
War has been with us as long as there has been humans, and likely before, judgi
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-- Odo Marquard, Philosopher
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Oh really?
I'm pretty sure you're a troll but I'll play anyway. If you think:
-Living your entire life in servitude
-Having to work while sick because there is no such "sick time" (which would probably kill you even though simple rest would have helped)
-Turning to prayer to solve every problem you can't understand (which is basically all of them)
-Knowledge being sequestered by the wealthy simply because books were hard to make
-and everyone was too busy dealing with their own food, illness and wild animals to
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What can the French win at... let me see. France is internationally competitive in:
* Having names for various minor variations in sexual acts.
* Baking bread.
* Making wine.
* Taking vacation (30 per year legal minimum vacation plus 10 holidays).
* Smoking.
* Organizing nation-paralyzing strikes.
* Intellectual bullshit sessions.
Of course on the negative side is there's their world class national chauvinism (t
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Don't forget Parkour :)
Re:PATHETIC. (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, parkour is just a fancy form of running away.
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You forgot "making movies nobody wants to watch or can understand". It's a bit like watching a dubbed black and white Kubrick movie with badly matched subtitles.
Re:naughty naughty (Score:5, Insightful)
You've obviously never played MMORPG. :)
People will PAY EXTRA to cheat depriving themselves of any glory in accomplishment... for the empty bragging rights that come with having something you didn't earn, and which has no inherent real world value.
But they still do it in droves.
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You've obviously never played MMORPG. :)
People will PAY EXTRA to cheat depriving themselves of any glory in accomplishment... for the empty bragging rights that come with having something you didn't earn, and which has no inherent real world value.
But they still do it in droves.
Not sure what reality you frequent, but that's popular in any game that has competition and even most that don't. (solitare for example.)
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You've obviously never played MMORPG. :)
People will PAY EXTRA to cheat depriving themselves of any glory in accomplishment... for the empty bragging rights that come with having something you didn't earn, and which has no inherent real world value.
But they still do it in droves.
The accomplishment being clicking on mobs until your finger falls off? Just saying. It's a time waster no matter how you play it. Not that there's anything wrong about that.
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The accomplishment being clicking on mobs until your finger falls off? Just saying. It's a time waster no matter how you play it. Not that there's anything wrong about that.
At a certain point, there is a genuine difficulty to do certain things that requires a certain amount of skill and intelligence.
Not all mmorpgs have this mind you... some are just mindless time sinks and nothing more.
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He wouldn't actually sit down. He would stand next to the table.
Re:How would that work ... (Score:4, Funny)
A Grand Master is among us. *bows*
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It wasn't cheating.
In France, even the knights move like Queens.
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On a related note, does anyone know the Slashdot version of ^K?
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Keep my fine sport(!) chess, safe from those people.
Typical sports envy. Chess is not a sport. It's a board game.
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It's not whether you are taking it serious or not, it's that the word "sport", in common usage, applies to physical activity.
When chess fans use it, they are just trying to latch on to the popularity and good connotations of the term. Some English-speaking players have taken to calling these intellectual games "mind sports", which is just stupid.
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There's not a need for a new word because "game" accurately describes what it is. There are other qualifiers like "tournament chess", "professional chess", "competitive chess", etc. that serve the same purpose without the bogus appeal to sports.
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Not all sports are games. Weightlifting is widely regarded to be a sport, but there is no game element to it. You can either lift a big pile of metal, or you can't.
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I say we should let Barry Bonds and his ilk shoot up steroids or whatever they like and leave them the hell alone.
For professional sports like football and baseball, cycling and the like, I think that's a very interesting idea.
I for one throught football was much more interesting in the days of the Oakland Raiders. Football (at least) is a "thug" sport that involves violence as a major part of the play. I say let the players use whatever gives them the edge.
Now, having someone burgle the coach's office for the play-book, or crack the crypto on the wireless com the opposing team is using during the game, that's not
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Grow up, get over it, find a grown up activity where cheating gets you punched in the throat.
"Grown up activities" that intellectually mature individuals participate in generally don't involve getting "punched in the throat", even for cheating. That's not how intellectually mature individuals deal with such situations.
No offense, but... How old are you?
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Chess groupies. Just saying.
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At least one of the top star craft players dates one of the members of Girl's Generation.
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"If two gods were to play, white would forever win. This we *do* know as indisputable fact."
Despite your trolling, what is a known fact is that no, we don't know that. We still really don't know if chess is a first-mover-wins or not (i.e.: it's like tic-tac-toe -or even it might be the case that chess is a second-mover-wins game).
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Actually, winning probabilities for the 1450 guy are still 4%, according to the official ELO math:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system#Mathematical_details [wikipedia.org]
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You don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Most people think the game is a draw. Theoretically it can be any possibility. There are no proofs.
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and here is that inevitable moment: when an inflammatory but somewhat interesting poster reveals himself to be a total kook.
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You don't play competitive, do you?
Competitive, professional "sport" is not about sport at all. It's about money.
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In this case the game was cheating, and they innovated a new sort of menage-a-trois system for beating chess organizers.
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Nothing worse the cheating and losing. And no the losing loser is not the winner in some twisted proverb of the world