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Top French Chess Players Suspended For Cheating
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."
Would have been much easier and less obvious than changing seats for every move.
That's what you get for putting money on the line. No one would do that for the glory of it because there would be no glory in it.
... if the agreed upon seat is already occupied?
So the French can't even pwn at Chess without cheating? What CAN they do without stooping to low ethical levels?
Shoot down Libyan jets after they have landed back at their home air bases? :)
"Curiouser and Curiouser...." -Alice
argh why did you post as ac id have modded you up, first time ive laughed in days.
-Noc
My first thought, how would steroids help in chess? Guess chess isn't like other sports.
Please tell me you are not from the USA...
And those people who make a living and get the most attractive members of the opposite sex for being able to do 100 apm in Starcraft are taking the game too seriously?
My understanding was that Chess, while significantly less intractable than some games, was still something that you needed a fairly serious computer to play well fast enough to be tournament legal.
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.
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 (they invented the word, after all). In that respect the French are pretty much like Americans, but without the overwhelming military power and a with a more appealing lifestyle.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It wasn't cheating.
In France, even the knights move like Queens.
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?)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
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.
According to TFA, this cheat is discovered by their own federation, and disclosed so at least these cheaters can be considered as violator of their own ethics and the rest of the French chess players on that level won't have a bad reputation or leave a doubt in future events.
It's wise, and also fortunate, that they solved this problem in house.
Don't forget Parkour :)
which is totally what she said
nous avons perdu encore une fois!
It's fun and it's a challenge. What else do you need?
Er, my mistake, chess is not yet solved. But in any case, I think the evidence strongly suggests that with perfect play, white wins, and certainly my experience indicates that memorizing opening play leads to a degree of advantage that means you can't really seriously play the game without bothering to spend significant amounts of time memorizing. If it's your thing, go ahead, but I just got bored.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
On a related note, does anyone know the Slashdot version of ^K?
Of course, parkour is just a fancy form of running away.
Chess might be a game to someone who doesn't understand it. To most serious chess-players this isn't a game. Sure chess in it self is a game. But when you are studying openings for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, when you have spend weeks analysing every game your opponent has played to give you that edge when the match is, so you might be able to get that last win you need for your grandmaster or international or regular master title... only to find out later that your opponent was a cheating son of a bitch? No sir. That ain't no game. Adults should be able not to cheat, or not to play. I would even call for a system where a caught cheater would be banned from joining any other club or sport. Not by law, but just by sport-clubs regulations. Keep my fine sport(!) chess, safe from those people.
Out of every response ive garnered in tese fifteen minutes, yours is te most lucid and sees the most clearly theough the entire issue. But sadly, you are wrong. Even im random play there are board Configurations that cannot be rwached, and in the real set there are branches upon which one player sits already imminently defeated by any competitive opponent, and within the remaining competitive set there is a set we could say is noncompetitive or we could say is randomized. But it doeant break through its subset notation into anything more grand; rather , within what would be to a computer a narrow instance of plays closely following a line of entropy, there is an opportunity to destroy the hopes of a system based of memorization of openings and so-far-successful middle games, that opportunity being proporionate to one's own memory space versus the opponent's. We could add an optimization and it would still be about resources in an unknown. Which against a fellow computer is a procedure; only a human ho hasmt thought it through believes its achieving something outside the game or improving its life and not wasting its time playing.
I say this because I know fame theory and i know that if chess is a balanced game there is a theoretical point to always achieve stalemate. I searched for it for ten years and interviewed an amazing array of hobbyists and scholars and i can assure you, chess is not balanced.
Firat player wins, that is chess.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Ho / who
Firat / first, etc.
(ipod 2g)
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
APM == Ass Pussy Mouth?
You know nothing about chess and why it is good for your development. That's for sure. And about that God part? Bobby Fisher would tend to disagree if he got to play White ;)
Yeah. I say we should let Barry Bonds and his ilk shoot up steroids or whatever they like and leave them the hell alone.
Have gnu, will travel.
What a bunch of bull shit. A 2000 player will never, ever, ever loose from a 1450 rated guy. The only time that this happens is when that 1450 guy is heavily underrated, maybe due to a lack of games. Anyone playing chess on competition level will just know that either you are lying or you aren't telling the whole story.
Bravo!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Keep my fine sport(!) chess, safe from those people.
Typical sports envy. Chess is not a sport. It's a board game.
Neh, when you play it casual it is a game. Just like jogging once a year isn't a sport. When you start training, when you enter competition, you are doing a sport. In Dutch we call these non-physical sports "denksport" that would translate to thinkingsport. A word every language should have.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
I completely agree. And while you mention it, anyone who has ever played chess in a semi-serious fashion will be able to tell you that a lot of girls dig guys with big brains. And not a few of them are hot. And a lot of them play the game and are good at it (read: "smart").
Chess groupies. Just saying.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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You don't play competitive, do you?
Competitive, professional "sport" is not about sport at all. It's about money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
Nothing worse the cheating and losing. And no the losing loser is not the winner in some twisted proverb of the world
Huh? Why would The Smart People ever want to be associated with sports in any way? I thought that intellectuals looked down on sports players and sports fans? When did becoming a "sport" become fashionable? Trying to attract the wrong kind of crowd?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Neh that isn't the issue. The issue is that for one reason or another English doesn't have a word for thinking sports, where practically all other languages do. It's a shortcoming of English and specifically a shortcoming of the English 'sport'. Although it isn't really English, but Americanish.
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.
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."
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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 the same.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Will this do?
and here is that inevitable moment: when an inflammatory but somewhat interesting poster reveals himself to be a total kook.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
"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).
Sport means athletic activity. You know, under the Yellow Light in the Big Room? Healthy stuff. What you're getting at is a game. All sports are games, but not all games are sports. Honestly, given the stigma attached to athletes in intellectual communities, I'm surprised anyone wants "sport" attached to "thinking" at all!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Like I mentioned earlier. Your definition is just wrong. One of the 'sports' I use to do was Sanda. Compare that to football and you can't call football a serious sport. Or baseball. Or basketball. But luckily for the people that haven't been raised in the US, a thinking sport or mind sport is something really normal. Almost every language has word for it. In the end the difference between a game or a sport, is the effort that is put in by the guy/girl doing it and the way they look at. Is it just for relaxing? Or do I want to become better, good. Becoming better at something is a sport in itself.
Playing a game implies fun for me. Professional chess sure ain't a game...
When I was in high school we travelled to another school for a match. They had cheerleaders. Of course they weren't actually allowed to cheer or anything, but they did sit around holding their pompoms, so for that day at least, it was a sport as far as I was concerned. :-)
At least one of the top star craft players dates one of the members of Girl's Generation.
Play Command HQ online
In this case the game was cheating, and they innovated a new sort of menage-a-trois system for beating chess organizers.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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
Really? I thought it was all about trying to lift more than anyone else. I guess all those olympic medals were just distributed at random. "Most people assume their sport is as simple as it gets..
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Sure, you can qualify "chess", but can you find a phrase as snappy as "mind sports" which is broad enough to cover tournament chess, bridge, and crossword solving?
given the stigma attached to athletes in intellectual communities
I don't think you've taken on board Santax's point that the USA's culture doesn't extend beyond the USA.
Once jets have landed, you can shoot them, but you can't shoot them down.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
They do physical activity: They physically move physical pieces on a physical chess board.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It's not a sport unless it can kill you. - Hemingway
Eating too much can kill you. So I guess if my doctor tells me I should do more sports, going to McDonalds for a few extra burgers is sufficient.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Really man, I was about to agree with you, but then you claim a real achievement is having sex?
Like every adult ever, and alot of teenagers do?
s/every/almost every/
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Take 4chan over
Yes, "games", "intellectual games", or "competitive gaming", or "professional gaming".
"mind sports" is stupid because of the strong association with physical activity.
Because despite some looking down their noses on the sport crowd, others are jealous of the popularity of sports. On a more practical propaganda level, some people are trying to games like chess and Go into the Olympics. I kid you not.
If you find above intriguing, I recommend movie Hatley High. It's a great little clever comedy piece from Canada.
If you fall asleep during game of chess, you may fall forwards onto the board, could gouge your eye(s) with a queen or bishop figure, and if the figures are tall enough, it can even kill you.
</grainofsalt>
So... you're saying that the French workers actually have backbones and balls and get to reap the benefits of both?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Yes, really, precisely because it is about lifting more than anyone else, and nothing more.
As an example, what strategy would you employ when dead-lifting 400 pounds. Either you do it or you don't.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Neh that isn't the issue. The issue is that for one reason or another English doesn't have a word for thinking sports, where practically all other languages do. It's a shortcoming of English and specifically a shortcoming of the English 'sport'. Although it isn't really English, but Americanish.
The reason may be that it is no sport? In Spanish there is no word for "thinking sports", neither.
Why can't
Tightrope walking, juggling chainsaws, and making love 12 times in a day are also incredibly difficult physically, but just like synchronized swimming, they shouldn't be considered sports.
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I for one throught football was much more interesting in the days of the Oakland Raiders.
You're aware they're still around, right?
Advice: on VPS providers
How old are you? Apparently you are unaware of the reputation of the *original* Oakland Raiders. I guess you are under 25?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Personally I would keep chess outside the realm of sports, like racing.
I realize, it is not clear. like I would do with racing i.e. I don't want to consider either one a sport.
No mod points today, but this post deserves much better than 1 Funny it is currently at.
You never go ass to mouth.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Go in the Olympics would be ridiculous. I guess something like a 45 min match with 3 x 30 second byo-yomi would be normal (there are some professional tournaments like this), or Canadian byo-yomi (10/25 would be appropriate), but really have you seen the Mejin cup?
Curling involves enough strategy and rapid computation to be a semi-mental sport suitable for the Olympics. Go is awesome, but I think it's misplaced in a competition that revolves around running, pole vaulting, throwing shit, sticking an ice skate in your ass and going balls-first down an ice chute, etc. Archery should be an Olympic sport; if you want to put Go in there, you need a different kind of collective competition (like, mind olympics or some shit, Go/Shogi (fuck Western chess)/Scrabble/Luzanqi (or Stratego, which may be better) and so on).
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Agreed. Punitive retaliation should be non-serious. Don't deliver a knock-out blow to the head (brain damage), but a lash across the face is painful and distressing and ... harmless. A proper body blow is also harmless. Punching someone in the throat can be fatal, easily. Negative reinforcement is awesome, because as long as I can get away with it without personal danger I'm pretty good; but I really hate being backhanded across the face, even if it's relatively harmless.
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http://www.hulu.com/watch/4162/saturday-night-live-chess-tournament