FIDE has been staging
a giant Internet qualification tournament for the next world championship.
Eight of the 128 places will be determined by the outcome of this online
competition.
But such mammoth competitions
on the Internet have their own special problems. In the privacy of their
homes players do not always stick to the highest ethical standards. "How
can I tell if someone uses a computer for cheating?" asked one dispairing
player on the FIDE
dicussion forum. Another visitor replied: "If people are undefeated,
with no verified GM title, and are the most powerful player. Its obvious
if they are using a chess program when they have a 2800+ rating. I have
seen a player with a 4000+ rating with 4000 wins 0 losses!"
Now FIDE has decided
to replay of some semi-final games, and have in fact introduced an on-line
appeal form. This has apparently been used vigorously, as Mark Crowther
reports in THE WEEK IN CHESS 362 (15th October 2001):
FIDE Internet Qualifiers
The FIDE Internet qualifiers are coming to a conclusion. There are eight
places for the FIDE Chess Championships available. Quite who takes the
final places could be very interesting. However I'm getting more and
more complaints about the organisation of the event following on from
the complaints of Epishin last week. One GM ended his E-Mail by saying
"I tried all I could do to qualify without cheating and I'm not
interested (this time at least!) in playing advanced chess. I now will
stop playing because it makes no sense."
Another competitor
outlined the problems starting his E-Mail by saying "The world's
first ever advanced chess swiss system tournament. Horrible horrible
stuff."
He continued "At
least 90% of the participants are cheating, using computers, or teams
of GMs . Everyone's using a computer. However, FIDE hasn't forfeited
a soul for computer cheating. Practically all of my 15 opponents so
far used computers." This in spite of assurances that there would
be anti-computer controls at the later stages.
He added the $39
entry fee which you pay by credit card was accepted in Zambia.
"The format
is absurd. Play in a playing zone, play in a 102 player 9 round swiss,
then a 64 player 8 round swiss? What sense is that?? To boot, FIDE kept
changing it's own rules, adding players to the swiss. The pairings were
usually wrong, and there were many server problems."
In addition players
have been defaulted without playing a move unable to connect to the
server. There are all sorts of bugs with the software one player losing
a game on time in spite of the board having King vs. King. The time
control is 25 minutes + 15 seconds per move which is practically a cheaters
charter. One added "You can't have an increment greater than 5
seconds in an online prize tournament. It's too easy to use a computer
in that time frame."
Links:
- FIDE
web site – with details of the FIDE qualifier
- Latest
issue of TWIC – Issue 362 of Oct. 15, 2001
If you are using ChessBase 8 you can download the latest issues of TWIC
each week with a single mouse click ("Help – Get new games").