The case of Fang Yuxiang

There are valid reasons why the World Chess Federation wants smartphones and other electronic devices banned from chess tournaments. By nature of them being smartphones, they are mini-computers in their own right and users are able to instal whatever application, or app, they want into them. And the more powerful the processors become, well, the more powerful are the chess apps too.

Naturally, this leads to widespread cheating in the game. We have players referring to their chess apps to analyse crucial positions during games. Mind you, several cheaters have already been caught using their smartphones in toilets and lavatories. Just a month or two ago, a chess grandmaster was photographed looking at his mobile in the toilet, with his pants up, whilst his game was going on. He was outed and Fide, the World Chess Federation, is poised to slap a suspension on him. Igors Rausis has since said he is contemplating retiring from playing competitively altogether.

[Update on Igors Rausis' case: It has been reported on 6 Dec 2019 that Rausis has been slapped with a six-year ban and his Grandmaster title removed. But then, the player had already said earlier that he had played his last game of competitive chess, anyway.]

Malaysian chess players aren't that innocent either. There was a report in May this year of a Malaysian chess player being booted out of a tournament in Dublin, Ireland, the month before when he was caught cheating with a smartphone. I had heard that there is also cheating going on in local chess tournaments despite precautions taken by the organisers, for example, in this year's Selangor open tournament where a participant was caught with his mobile showing the position on the board, presumably while the game was still going on.

For that reason, in long time-control events, players are asked to surrender their mobiles to the organisers in the tournament hall before the start of every round. No use just asking them to switch off the mobiles. If players want to cheat, they would just turn them on again in the toilets. Also no use asking them to pass their mobiles to their friends or relatives for safe-keeping outside the tournament hall. What's to prevent a cheater from collecting his mobile from his friend or relative while on his way to the toilet and returning it before re-entering the playing hall? Thus there is now this added responsibility of chess organisers to keep the players' mobiles each round. But it still doesn't solve the problem of friends and relatives waiting outside the hall to pass their own chess app-laden mobiles to the intending cheater.

At the recently concluded Malaysia Chess Festival, in particular, during those few days when the Open, Seniors Open and Challengers tournaments were played, the players' toilet movements were scrutinised closely by the organisers. They monitored how long a chess player had gone to the toilets and even the frequency. And red flagged any player who went many times during a round.

By the third day of the event, a mobile app had been implemented to scan the QR codes of the players pass tags. No player could leave the playing hall without his tag scanned and it was rescanned when the player returned to the hall. This way, the organisers could check how long or often a player would be away from his table, if required.

At this point, I'd like to acknowledge here the work done by Andrew Ooi, long known to the local chess community as Gilachess. He devised the toilet QR code app for the Malaysia Chess Festival. In his facebook entry, he said that it was the most challenging thing he did during the festival. "That's because even though programming is my profession, I have never written any program that could run on the phone," he wrote, and adding, "The scanning process was from the phone, data on players going in and out is saved on the web. Thanks to Google, Github, Stack Overflow and lots of cutting and pasting, it was done within 24 hours. Also thanks to GACC team for massive job of printing 300 players' tag that had the QR code embedded which was done in a day and a half."

Thus, these were the preventive measures - and more - taken at the chess festival to minimise cheating: the surrender of mobiles and all types of watches to the organisers, the scanning of the QR codes on the players' tags, the occasional metal scanning of players moving through the doors, plus the eagle-eyed observations of the arbiters and tournament helpers.

It so happened during the first day that the QR code scanning was implemented, a sharp-eyed arbiter spotted FangYuxiang, a grandmaster from China, emerging from the toilet with a mobile in his hand. He backed off when confronted and presumably began deleting the chess apps from his mobile. In the meantime, the Chief Arbiter was summoned.

From what I'm told, in front of witnesses, the Chief Arbiter asked the chess player to empty his pockets but he refused. Not once, but two or three times he refused. Then a metal detector revealed an object in his pocket. When the Chief Arbiter removed a mobile from the pocket and asked the player what it was, he had the temerity to answer, "I don't know." Naturally, the mobile was confiscated and it was found that the Stockfish app had been deleted. Fortunately, the traces of the app remained in the mobile and the timestamp of its last use was revealed as 2.59pm. This, however, was just before the round started.

If the timestamp was after 3pm, there would be grounds for cheating while a chess game was in progress. But since the timestamp was before 3pm, there was a doubt whether cheating had actually occurred. Nevertheless, the player was disqualified and ejected from the tournament not due to the suspicion but because he had broken the very first rule to surrender his phone to the organisers in the playing hall. There was no one else to blame but himself.

Somehow, this matter had reached the ears of the Chinese Chess Association even before the tournament ended. How the Chinese authorities are going to handle this problem of their player will be up to them but I'm sure the World Chess Federation will have their own procedures to follow too. I would expect a period of suspension will be imposed on Fang Yuxiang before too long.

-----------------------------

Note: In 2014, the World Chess Federation had approved the following proposal from the Anti-Cheating Commission: