Why I Won’t Run Big-Money Events
Chessbase knows why I won’t run large prize tournaments. I don’t care to play hi-tech detective against the cheats those sort of events bring out of the woodwork.
Bill Goichburg was quoted as saying this was taking cheating to a new level, but the truth is this is nothing new. A player was caught several years ago in Germany doing much the same thing.
How does a TD combat this? Hotels could help. The current rage against cell phones has led some to install shielding in some conference rooms, which block other signals as well. But beyond that, what can be done? Do we do body cavity searches before and after bathroom trips?
Just as disturbing along these lines is the push for the adoption of the MonRoi game recording device. There’s no way for a TD to tell if the device has been tampered with. The MonRoi reps smile and say they have a checksum check in the device that will prevent that. I shook my head in despair as no one else in the room made the obvious (to me) connection that if the code in the device can be tampered with, the checksum can be as well. Not mention the idea that someone can come up with something that looks like a MonRoi but is really something else (buy a MonRoi, replace the innards with something useful and small). Neither of these tasks are technically trivial, I grant you (changing and replacing the ROM code is the simplest — all it requires is a little knowledge, a lot of patience, and a PROM burner).
So the USCF seems well on its way to making sure every player in a major tournament is allowed to have a device with same CPU as many PDA’s available and even in use at the board. Yet somehow I’m supposed to ensure that no cheating takes place.
Still, perhaps the cheaters will at least turn in copies of their game scores, so we’ll be able to have some interesting chess games to study.