Private surveillance firms, background screening and sweeping for electronic devices – all these might sound like the type of security measures needed to get into Downing Street or the White House. Yet such is the concern around cheating in one of the world’s oldest, most civilised sports that all three will be in operation when the 2024 World Chess Championships starts play today in Singapore.
Each arriving competitor will be frisked for telephones, electronic equipment and other metal items. Access to the playing area, toilets and rest areas will also be restricted.
Watching the defending champion, a 32-year-old Chinese man named Ding Liren, and the challenger, 18-year-old Indian Gukesh Dommaraju, like a hawk will be sports promoter and CEO of World Chess, Ilya Merenzon. He believes his sport is facing an existential crisis and, if authorities can’t stamp out cheating, it risks losing all integrity.
“World Chess’s view is that 10% of matches involve cheating,” the 48-year-old tells the Daily Express, pointing to data from online.
“But some experts think almost 50% of elite players have either cheated or played against cheats.”
He and his colleagues are now fighting back, employing all sorts of methods to clamp down on illegal play, including the promotion of polygraph tests, more of which later.
Merenzon’s concerns are valid amid mounting accusations of cheating in the sport in recent years. Just last month, Kirill Shevchenko, who is ranked 69 in the world, was expelled from a Spanish tournament for allegedly using a mobile phone.
The International Chess Federation handed him a temporary 75-day suspension.
Yet the biggest scandal hit two years ago when five-times world champion Magnus Carlsen, a consummate professional, unexpectedly withdrew from a tournament in the United States.
The grandmaster from Norway, who was number one in the world at the time and on the back of a 53-match unbeaten streak, had somehow lost a game in a Missouri tournament to the lowest-ranked player in the draw, an American called Hans Niemann.
The following day Carlsen made the highly unusual decision to withdraw from the entire event, posting a message on social media alongside a cryptic video clip of Jose Mourinho, the Portuguese soccer coach, saying: “If I speak, I am in big trouble.”
Many interpreted this as an insinuation that Niemann had cheated. One theory circulating was that the American had secreted a tiny, vibrating, electronic device in his most intimate area that was digitally connected to an accomplice who was using a chess computer to work out his best possible moves.
The rumours gathered extra pace when US billionaire Elon Musk, himself a fan of chess, amplified the theory on his social media platform X. Even the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov weighed in on the argument, complaining that “hearsay and cryptic bull****” was damaging the sport. What followed was a scandal that would rock chess to its very core. Niemann vehemently denied any skulduggery but admitted he had cheated years before, as a youngster, during online chess tournaments. He then offered to play completely naked to prove he wasn’t hiding any electronic devices.
Carlsen later accused Niemann outright of being a cheat, while the online platform suspended the American from competing, before suggesting dozens of other grandmasters had cheated in online chess.
Around the same time, Niemann filed a lawsuit against Carlsen and others, demanding $100million in damages for defamation. A judge dismissed the lawsuit and all parties later settled out of court. In September, Carlsen and Niemann sat down in their first match since 2022, meeting in the semi-final of the 2024 Speed Chess Championship in Paris. Carlsen defeated his opponent by 17.5 to 12.5.
Cheating in chess is nothing new. According to legend, Canute, King of England in the 11th century, murdered a Danish nobleman after an argument over improper play.
But there have never been so many eyes on the sport. Interest in chess is at an all-time high thanks to greater access to the game through the internet and technology.
And an entire new fanbase was won over by The Queen’s Gambit, Netflix‘s 2020 smash-hit series starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a glamorous chess prodigy making her name in the mid-1950s.
Consequently, the stakes are higher than ever. And it was IBM’s invention of a chess super-computer called Deep Blue – which in the late 1990s defeated the-then world champion Garry Kasparov – that first created the possibility of technological cheating.
Nowadays, with a simple mobile phone or electronic device, players can receive winning moves from a computer on the other side of the world.
There have since been dozens of disqualifications and bans. At the 1993 World Open, officials noticed one player with a suspicious bulge in his pocket which buzzed at key moments. In 2006, an Indian player was found to have a Bluetooth-enabled device sewn into his cap.
Occasionally, the cheating has incited violence. At a 2013 tournament in Ireland, a Romanian player was so incensed by his opponent’s deception that he smashed down the cubicle door of a toilet and hauled him out. Both men were banned, one for cheating, the other for violent conduct.
As technology has advanced, so have the opportunities for trickery. In 2010, at a Russian tournament, French player Sébastien Feller was caught receiving signals from his coach, who in turn had received text messages from an accomplice at home.
Tournament toilets have proved to be particularly useful for furtive cheats. Over the last decade, players from the Netherlands, Georgia, Russia, Latvia and Armenia – to name but a few – have been caught redhanded, consulting phones or handheld computers in the smallest room.
But these were all in-person chess games, or “over-the-board” as they are known in the sport. Online chess, where players are competing remotely, offers far more opportunities, since they can’t be monitored all the time.
Step forward Merenzon, who, along with his colleagues, is now fighting back by employing various methods to clamp down on illegal play. During online tournaments, they use artificial intelligence to flag up suspicious sequences of moves, and at in-person tournaments there are metal detectors to search for hidden devices, as well as heart rate monitors to spot tell-tale signs of distress.
But their strongest weapon of all is a polygraph lie-detector test – the type famously used by intelligence services such as the FBI and the CIA. World Chess is now offering voluntary tests to all players in the top 100 world rankings in the hope it will allow the falsely accused to clear their names.
“Cheating allegations have cast a shadow over chess for too long,” says Merenzon. “By introducing voluntary polygraph testing, we are taking a decisive step to protect the integrity of our beloved sport. This initiative not only supports honest players, but also strengthens the public’s trust in chess as a fair game.”
Helping him in his mission is a former world chess champion from Russia,Vladimir Kramnik. In August this year, at a London tournament called Clash of Blames, he took on another grandmaster, José Martínez Alcántara, from Peru, and volunteered to undergo the polygraph test.
In charge of security at the game was the London branch of the famous detective agency Pinkerton. They oversaw access into the playing room; they used a metal detector to frisk players for devices; they monitored spectators for potential accomplices; and they repeatedly checked the tournament toilets for hidden devices.
But, most dramatically of all, they operated the polygraph test, strapping Kramnik’s arm and chest to the machine, before asking him a series of questions. As expected, he passed with flying colours.
Hiring Pinkerton, whose reputation is well known, was a sensible move by World Chess. Set up by Allan Pinkerton in the United States in the 1850s, the agency first rose to fame after foiling an 1861 plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Not long after, Pinkerton agents were hired to track down Wild West outlaws Jesse James, the Reno Gang, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The agency claims to be a forerunner to the United States Secret Service and to have invented the criminal mugshot that is now used worldwide.
But even Pinkerton can’t root out all the cheats in chess. As Merenzon concedes, even with the most rigorous security set-ups, it’s impossible to eradicate all wrongdoing.
“To test for all electronic devices, we would need scanners more complicated than the ones you get at airports,” he explains. “Cheats could implant tiny microchips in their body, swallowing them like a pill, and using them to receive a signal. We couldn’t test for that kind of device.”
Rory Lamrock is director of Pinkerton’s UK office. He explains how tournament organisers need to be proportionate in their security measures. At the Clash of Blames match, some spectators suggested Pinkerton could have used militarygrade jammers to block out all mobile phone signals entirely.
“But that would also have knocked out all of the electronic equipment they needed to stream the chess games,” he adds. “And it would have prevented anyone within a certain radius from calling for an ambulance if they were ill.
DAY: Hans was accused device in spot to win “You can’t eliminate 100% for certain every single type of device. Some kinds of ingested devices, for example, wouldn’t be picked up with the metal detector we use and would require a medical MRI scan. That’s why the polygraph is a useful extra step.”
Given all the suspicion, security will be understandably tight at today’s World Chess Championship, which could last until December 13. Polygraphs won’t be used as the International Chess Federation hasn’t agreed to them yet. The logistics and costs, not to mention the consent required for players to be tested, are still too problematic.
Yet, as the chess saying goes, it only takes one bad move to lose the game. So do watch every space.
