Thread by @mdemeillon

My personal experience with a #chess cheater - a thread:

Every year I organize a tournament at work. Two years ago, one player was about to compete in the 4th and penultimate round against a senior executive when I happened to log in to chesscom

to find out that their account had been closed for a fair play violation.
I emailed chesscom explaining that this person was participating in a tournament and asked for details on the account closure.

They emailed back that they can’t disclose specific information but that when they close accounts, they are willing to stand by it in a court of law.
This left me with a problem. I didn’t want this person participating in the tournament (my tournament!) but

an account closure by itself wasn’t a lot to go on. There was a risk that their professional reputation could be harmed if I disqualified them; I feared I might be liable for any consequences (loss of income). I didn’t want to falsely accuse an innocent person.

I decided to reach out to the person and hint (as opposed to accuse outright) at the fact that their account closure was suspicious. Looking back now, they did exactly what cheaters backed into a corner would do:

first misdirected (oh, I just forgot my password and had to open a new account), then doubled down, became uncomfortably verbose, lashed out at their previous opponents (whom they assumed made a complaint against them after losing),

became emotional (“omg, I can’t believe anyone would think I would cheat! - that’s terrible!”).

I fell for it - hook, line and sinker. I became uncertain about my suspicions, I felt bad for suspecting them

(yes, they told me about their fond memories of their grandfather playing chess with them as a child!) I kept thinking about how terrible it would be to falsely accuse an innocent person. And ultimately I couldn’t understand the why -

*why* would someone cheat at a *work* tournament with absolutely no prize money, very little reward, and all the risk to their career and livelihood? It made no sense to me.
Having won the game against the executive, they were in the finals.

I decided to take the higher (and safer) road and let them play the last round, the final for the championship title - a game that happened to be against me.
We played live on camera. The game was all wrong. Long thinks where thinking shouldn’t be needed.

Early advantage with super precise and aggressive opening play but completely nonsensical moves as soon as they were winning. After the game, they couldn’t analyze anything accurately, made no sense explaining the weird moves nor the long thinks.

Post game, I immediately got a barrage of messages from spectators who all said the same thing: the game was suspicious. Something was off. These other players didn’t know about the account closure - but even so could tell that something was just off.

I now knew for sure that this person had cheated all along. Without a doubt. I felt like a fool. I felt stupid for buying the emotional bs they had spun to me before. For giving them a second chance where none was due. Duped for being the trusting fool that I was.

Remember this, good #chess friends: most of us are inherently good people, and want to believe the same about others. Many of us will never understand why people cheat, or how anyone can have the guts to be so brazen about it. But these people exist (Elizabeth Holmes!)

Trust your intuition- if something feels “off”, it probably is.

At the same time, of course, I believe in being kind, and not judging, and not jumping to conclusions, and being a decent human being.

It turns out that, just like the game of chess, there are no way to see the perfect answers from where we are now. Maybe we will only know the right move in hindsight, after running the engine.