Author: KarinsDad
Date: 11:16:00 01/25/99
Go up one level in this thread
On January 25, 1999 at 13:10:06, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On January 25, 1999 at 10:06:04, KarinsDad wrote: > >>On January 25, 1999 at 08:34:38, Jürgen Hartmann wrote: >> >>>The German Newsmagazine "Der Spiegel" today reports a funny story: Mr. >>>Allwermann, an Elo 1925 amateur of age 55 has won a nine-round 2h/40 swiss >>>tournament and achieved a performance of 2630. >>> >>>Organizers and competitors got somewhat suspicious when the guy announced a mate >>>in eight in the decisive final round game against grandmaster Kalinichev! >>> >>>"Der Spiegel" writes that Mr. Allwermann's moves are reproducible with >>>Fritz5.32. While nobody understands how he has done it, there are rumours that >>>he formerly worked in the 'electronics business'. Moreover the German chess >>>magazine "Schachmagazin 64" not only points out the fantastic attacking >>>combinations but also some typical Fritz 'no-clue' moves like Bf4 in a closed >>>French Winawer as White. >>> >>>Seems like we will need airport-type security checks in tournaments in the >>>future. >>> >>>Jürgen >> >>Not only is this interesting that someone has actually done this, but a bigger >>problem comes in on how to detect and stop it. You cannot analyze all of the >>games played by the winners of tournaments, can you? Opinions on how to stop >>this kind of thing guys? >> >>I'm sure almost all of us has fantasized winning a big tournament this way since >>we are all interested in computer chess, but the majority of us are either: >> >>1) principled individuals >>2) chicken >>3) do not have a friend who would also be willing to cheat at this level (being >>successful without having a co-hort to handle unexpected crashes of the >>computer, etc.) >>4) are not technical enough to setup some form of radio system (do not do this >>in a casino tournament guys, you WILL get caught) >>5) are not smart enough to do this without getting caught (announcing mate in 8, >>what was he, nuts?). >> >>KarinsDad > >The solution is easy: to prevent it, play games in a room lined with a wire >mesh. IE in Orlando Florida, there is a retirement housing project where people >that are avid radio-controlled model airplane fans can buy a home. Since you >often work on your model in your home, and need the transmitter turned on to >tune things, and since the houses are within 1/2 mile of the model airport folks >fly at, they provide a RF-proof hobby room in each house that prevents RF >broadcasts from getting out of that room using the mesh I mentioned. Easy, but not practical. > >Another idea is to blanket the playing area with white-noise RF. But that >would be unpopular with anyone close by trying to watch a TV. :) Again for your reason and others, not practical. > >What _I_ would do is buy a high-quality frequency scanner that can cover the >spectrum up thru 1ghz or so, and run it in the tournament hall. There _must_ >be a transmitter (probably one of the new micro-CCD video cameras connected to >it) to get the moves out of the tournament site to the computer where the >operator is assisting. You could definitely find that signal with no problems, >and then a simple DF antenna could point the finger right at the person doing >the cheating. Were I doing it, I'd try to discover their modulation technique >and 'intercept'... and then overpower his receiver with my more powerful >transmitter and give him a couple of blunders to play. :) > >This will become more common as microelectronics continue to shrink. You'd have >to see some of the small CCD video cameras to believe them, but a camera the >size of a pencil eraser is easy to get, and hard to detect... > >And if the guy supposedly wears a hearing aid, that's a natural place to include >the receiver to get the moves back... How would you handle burst transmissions ( < 1 millisecond )? Hard to pick up with a standard frequency scanner. And if I was really getting tricky, I would encode my next frequency into the transmission and have redundancy checks, etc. I would have a transmitter in my shoe and receive binary responses back between shoes (3 bits from square, 3 bits to square) and I would send the move back to verify that it is correct (same with when the computer makes a move). All of this could be done with one quick burst per communication and the "local" electronics could slowly give the information back to the human. No cameras, no hearing aids, nothing visible. More effort than it is worth, but doable. KarinsDad :)
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