When mediocre chess player entered Italy’s prestigious International Chess Festival of Imperia, was ranked 51,366th in the world.They never stood up, always sat with arms folded and thumb under armpit, and blinked constantly and unnaturally. When festival officials inspected, they discovered that pendent was a video camera and that concealing a Morse code box connected to a computer that was either running a chess program or being monitored by an accomplice.
Chess didn’t use to be a ripe field for cheaters, but as technology has become smaller, more personal, and easier to hide, the issue has become more prominent. In 2013, the World Chess Federation and the Association of Chess Professionals were forced to set up an Anti-Cheating Committee.
The organizations have deployed a statistical tool developed by Professor of the University at Buffalo. that checks every game played in an official tournament. It compares each game to a broad and deep pool of statistical data in order to identify “outliers”—players who are performing well beyond their talent level.