This is not what “flying by the seat of your pants” is supposed to be.
Talk about pulling a win out of your ass.
“You’re not here for the game, are you?”
In the 1978 world championship, Viktor Korchnoi accused Anatoly Karpov’s support team of sending their player illegal signals by offering him a particular flavor of yogurt. For 44 years that has stood as the funniest cheating allegation in competitive chess, but I think we have a new leader.
We have come so far from the days when S.P.E,C.T.R.E. could simply write a note on the coaster of your water glass.
I was avoiding reading the article, but was too curious about how he was found out. Per the article, it’s just an accusation. No evidence is listed.
Now if it’s just an accusation pulled out of thin air, no evidence is needed. But what would be the evidence if it were true? Bystanders could hear the vibration every time he farted? Someone on the cheating team leaked?
I think it was the moaning each time his turn came around that gave him away.
But seriously, how in the world would someone be accused of this?
Maybe the accuser just pulled it out of his ass and by sheer luck, hit the center ring.
I’m not even going to think about what kind of information could be sent with that system. Playing warm and cold for which piece should be moved?
You’d just need to count buzzes. 1 buzz, pause 1 buzz, pause, 1 buzz, pause, 5 buzz means move the rook to square 5. You never have more than 8 buzzes, and with practice you can cut down the number because there’s only a few possible moves by that point. It should be obvious which piece to move and you would just need to give the destination.
Of course, I may be just buzzing out my ass.
Standard chess notation is quite compact and could be sent via morse code. The more interesting problem is how the current state of the board is being input into the computer.
The cheating team is watching the match and entering the opponents moves - these things are open to the public, generally.
Should be pretty easy. Get a very good chess game where you can play the computer. If this was televised, the co-conspirator could see it. Make the opponents move and ummm… buzz back the computers move. Effectively having the computer making your moves.
I play a shit ton of chess (against my Wife). I think that could work. Playing people on line is troubling, and you just have to trust that they are not doing this. Might get tricky with who goes first, but I think you could just set up two games on the co-conspirators end. I think.
Either that, of you have to conduct a cavity search before the game.
There’s an app for that. Comes with Windows.
There’s an old brain teaser where someone says “I could play two simultaneous games of chess against the two greatest players on Earth, and I guarantee that I won’t lose them both.” How?
Copy the other players move (that you don’t have a current move against) on the current board. Essentially making them play each other.
Wouldn’t the opening move kind of mess up that strategy though?
Yep. You do have to be sure that you’re black in one game and white in the other.
Ah, I see. That answers my question. If you have the first move in one game and not the second, you wait for the one opponent to make their move, and then you imitate that in the other game, making their first move your first move. Got it.