Cheater no.19: Aleksander Czerwon'ski

Aleksander Czerwon'ski, online chess cheater

Once upon a time, this guy from Poland had an IM-title and authority as national coach of youth and chess arbiter. Unfortunately, he holds no authority, no honour and no title today. If we call him "despicable bastard", it is not offence, because it is the truth. What happened to him? Nothing less that he commited huge offence to his online opponents: he cheated using chess engine to assist him - and got caught. He became infamous cheater.

I analyzed his online games and have no doubts about the rightness of his ban:
Top3 ... 307/328 ... 93.6 % ... 6.5 sd above expected value.

Chess.com catches many cheaters, sometimes dozens per day, most of them are completely unknown. This guy is somewhat exceptional however, because he has acted as chess arbiter, trainer and journalist. Hopefully, the chess public becomes informed about this and then The Chess Federation of Poland will have to make a decision:
a) Ignore the incident, maybe indicating that online cheating shouldn't be regarded as offence at all
b) Depose this guy from his posts to remain trustworthy.

I strictly recommend b). People should realize cheating is a bad form of lying and indicates faulty character. Speaking for myself, I wouldn't allow my children to attend cheater's lessons, I would refuse to accept cheater into chess tournament, I would try to avoid playing him at any cost, I wouldn't respect him as arbiter for his nonexistent authority and complete unreliability.

Cheater no.18: Pepijn van Erp

Pepijn van Erp, skeptic activist and online chess cheater

One of many subhuman online cheaters from the Benelux area. He was banned in the August last year and became already almost forgotten, well, until last week when I stumbled upon him again.

As I have written in my profile, I love mysteries, and I had worked in science too. Despite I am not a hard-rock skeptic myself, I often read skeptic's articles to check their point of view and appreciate their humour. So I googled a bit and discovered their forum. And what a surprise when I saw our computer cheat-witch appearing there.

This self-conscience supresser, denialist, chess engine shaman, devil's contractor and believer in his lucky star cheated from the early beginning I suppose. There is no sign he even attempted to play honestly for some time. In November 2009 when he registered, he sold his soul without hesitation and decided to use his diabolic silicon totem to perform supernatural chess witchcraft until his inevitable fall into Hell, where lost souls of damned cheaters tremble, in August 2011.

Mr. Van Erp seems to have plenty of spare time to spend online:
Youtube
Vimeo
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
and his personal page.
As he has got a job at Radbound Nijmegen University, this qualifies him to VIP cheaters page.

The serious issue is that cheaters shouldn't be employed at schools and universities and especially they shouldn't teach students. Also employers should be on guard if they decide to entrust funds to them.

Entertaining or infuriating?

This week I came across stored internet forum conversation between two notorious cheaters. The original matter of conversation was the collapse of Slovakian chess server www.sachy.sk. Paying members felt quite deceived and they discussed how to deal with the unpleasant situation after former owner went bankrupt. The case of some dubious chess site (where cheating perhaps wasn't even regulated) isn't interesting at all, but some former customers registered at chess.com. What is interesting and disturbing (and also entertaining or infuriating, it depends), it is the disrespectful approach of these subhumans towards chess and their opponents. Many of them are just used to run their engines without an opponent's knowledge and consent, thinking wrongly it goes without saying that everyone is doing it. No, it is just opposite, it goes without saying that everyone shall decide their moves themselves without the help of other players (chess engines and playing programs are indeed players). ICCF's internal habits are just reprehensible. Well, these people are used to cheat and they notoriously fail to realize they make offense to real, much better chess players.

Cheaters participating in this discussion were:

A. Zbynek Sevcik, nickname sevcazbynek, TAXI provider from Trebic, class D chess player (talentless little kids & infirm codgers level, just slightly above total beginners level). It was me who reported him when I saw discrepancies between his almost non-existent OTB credentials and his suspect results in turn-based correspondence-tempo online chess. He was banned the next day after my report, such thing used to be quite unusual then, so his case had been extremely blatant I guess. His photo you can see here.

B. Already known our Cheater no.9 Miroslav Gazi (migazi) who was banned twice (!!), the second time after an insolent attempt to come back and resume cheating with new account. Aside from ICCF, Miroslav Gazi has no chess credentials whatsoever and he is complete nonentity in chess.

Aside from these cheaters, several other persons participated including the forum administrator.

The discussion went fluently in both Slovakian and Czech languages. The language barrier is small, Czech and Slovakian people understand each other usually without problems, the difference between our languages isn't much bigger than e.g. between UK and US English. I have decided to translate and comment the crucial parts of their discussion.

I. 02/02/2010 11:34  migazi quoted sevcazbynek from another forum:
"Migazi, during the time it does not work, sachy.sk lost at least 70% of their customers, I would hesitate to return to "an only European" chess. On www.chess.com you are playing with the whole world, there are top players with rating 2900 and when running online translator you can translate everything from English into Czech, let some sachy.sk go bankrupt and the owner deserves to end under the bridge totally in debts for the fraud he deceived all of us, this is what he deserves, those sachy.sk would nobody buy for a single euro."
Comment: We can see, cheater Sevcik promotes chess.com as good chess site. How good and serious it can be, it became clear to him very soon. He didn't know he had been already reported!

II. 02/03/2010 15:26 (the next day) sevcazbynek wrote:
"migazi, I changed my mind again and I hope that sachy.sk will be put into operation, because today they canceled my account on chess.com because of cheating, allegedly it is prohibited on chess.com to use the pc for analysis, but it is clear that against the weaker players the pc analysis is not used while against the stronger players is, and this is what almost everyone does and I think that even on chess.com, but unfortunately they do not want to talk with me so when they do not want high-quality players and cancel their accounts then I have quit there and I have to find another server again, so i would return to sachy.sk before i find another server and settle there."
Comment: Sevcazbynek was just banned for cheating, because he was too lazy to read and obey the rules. He couldn't figure out why it happenned just to him when "everybody was doing it". His mind was deformed by improper habits from dubious chess online servers like sachy.sk or Hogan. Also he regarded himself as high-quality player, which was just ridiculous, because he was just poor cheating class D player.

III. 02/03/2010 16:06 migazi answered:
"sevcazbynek, the practice of chess.com against you is hard to understand, because you cannot be really successful today against the stronger opponents on such sites without computer analysis. I got the impression that their primary objective is to have the strongest players from around the world, but this procedure is not in accordance with this. Couldn't anyone have personal reasons against you? How do they actually prove it? And how can they exclude you? You can open another account."
Comment: The idiot migazi failed to realize what does the term "strong chess player" really mean. Unfortunately, it is not the computer monkey like him or sevcazbynek. He was also unaware anti-computer detection methods had been already developed and the anti-computer rule was meant seriously. And he recommended just to ignore the lifetime ban from serious correspondence chess and sneak back with new account, a thing he has done himself later.

IV. 02/03/2010 16:07 admin quoted chess.com
No Cheating or Computer Help
You can NEVER use chess programs (Chessmaster, Fritz, etc) to analyze current ongoing games unless specifically permitted (such as a computer tournament, etc). The only type of computer assistance allowed is games databases for opening lines in Turn-based Chess and Vote Chess. You cannot receive ANY outside assistance on Live Chess games
and added:
"It seems that this is indeed prohibited, but although I have played there for some time, even before sachy.sk went down, I didn't know about such restrictions. On the other hand, I do not believe that it is possible to detect innocent occasional use - e.g. 3 times per game. I don't mind, I do not use the engine in principle, sometimes database, but maybe in 1-2 in 10 games. But what I do often I copy a position into ChessBase (I copy FEN, run ChessBase and press the sequence S-S-O) and I analyze the position by moving variations on the board, but it is not prohibited."
During the following minutes, the conversation between migazi and admin went on:
migazi: "On the other hand, they offer computer analysis themselves in the menu, even extended for paying members."
admin: "It doesn't mean we may use it. I think this apply rather for completed games, but I am not sure, because I have never tried to use it. Basic member can use it once per week I think."
Comment: The much smarter admin got it straight even without reading site rules and showed perfect sense for online chess fair play, while the dumbass migazi couldn't understand and felt surprised that no-computer rule can seriously exist.

V. Next day, 02/04/2010 14:21 sevcazbynek complained:
"Without any reason, I wanted to log in and I received this:
Member Account Closed
Sorry! This member's account has been closed.
If you feel this was an error, please click here.
and when I started looking why I got the referrence to some pages:
please see this page: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/communi ... n-cheating.
I play chess for many years and I use analysis on PC for learning new moves especially in difficult positions, so I got the rating 2250 and I was without a defeat, but players with more elo and without a loss were playing against me, they even outplayed me a little in some positions so they "definitely did not use the pc :-)", it's sad, I live with chess, I devote several hours into it every day, I store the strongest moves (by the way, for three years i have stored over 10000 best moves leading to win or draw, I lost only about 2x thanks to it, but I do not use that program stupidly, I research some positions for hours in different variations and select the best etc. ........."
Comment: Cheater sevcazbynek felt hurt (he wrote with spelling mistakes), because he didn't realize the damage he had caused to chess.com and the online chess as a whole. Like migazi, he couldn't understand the existence and importance of the no-computer rule. He underwent dirty rationalization and put himself into role of poor fellow. He was right that cheating was widespread back then, but he added into it a lot. Spoiled habits of others really can't be used for own rationalization and I don't accept such excuses.

VI. 02/05/2010 speculations began:
9:13 migazi: "sevcazbynek, haven't you incidentally won there with some vain Yankee, who couldn't stand it? They are quite prone to this."
17:06 sevcazbynek: "Yes, it crossed my mind, one American I've played with him two games and when he started losing, he suddenly quit both games. A few days later my account was canceled, it could be this. Therefore, I would be grateful for our European server, the U.S. is probably only for Americans. ... [text shortened - sevcazbynek considers the acquisition of chess server sachy.sk and its conditions] ... if you have the time and the mood you can forward me some info on my email. My email is sevcazbynek@seznam.cz."
18:23 admin: "About the Americans, I don't think it is so. I lived a year in the U.S. and it is just opposite, they take sports and chess just for fun and they don't mind if they win. They take it rather like a hobby with a passion which unites them."
Comment: Not some "vain Yankee" but me. Not because I can't stand losing, but because I hate cheaters. And it is nice sevcazbynek gave us his email adress.

Additional notes:

Half year later, the idiot cheater migazi was banned too. Unlike sevcazbynek, he couldn't make even poor excuses he wasn't aware of the chess.com's no-computer rule - the discussion above convicts him he was and chose to continue cheating deliberately. Moreover, he ignored the ban and sneaked back with new account to be banned again. It cannot be called ignorance anymore, it is just pure assholism.

These two examples are nothing exceptional. Pavel Sladovnik, Nefertity, Alexander Horvath, Alena Lukasova, Ivan Cipka - just to name a few examples. They became addicted to engines at some dubious unregulated chess sites like Hogan, ICCF-webchess.com or sachy.sk and they lost all their correspondence chess skills if they ever had any. When they appeared at chess.com, they were all completely spoiled.

History, analysis and "psychoanalysis" of cheater "Mr. F.B."

I feel sorry for my readers, I am not going to reveal true identity of this guy this time. He wasn't banned for cheating by the site officially. He is an elderly man from Germany, he lived in the USA for a few years, he graduated from mathematics at Liepzig University, he works as hosting associated professor at university in Beirut. He used two accounts on chess.com: he admitted cheating with computer by mistake in a few games in his first account, he apologized then, closed this account and came back with new account having promised he would play honestly. He made it to top rated players with his new account and he became top#1 for a brief period after Ouachita and several other obvious cheaters were banned in Autumn 2009. He was accused of cheating by Costelus and after his much younger mistress (or wife) was banned for cheating, he closed his second account in early 2010 and left chess.com by himself.

He started as honest player in 2008 playing mostly free games for fun. His rating fluctuated around 2100. Then he started playing more prestigious tournaments.

I have analyzed his tournament games from this era by my usual setup and obtained these results:
(a few games didn't make the cut)
top1 ... 154/339 ... 45.43 %
top2 ... 223/339 ... 65.78 %
top3 ... 267/339 ... 78.76 %
As we can see, his top3 matchup rate is bellow average of elite unassisted CC players, thus we can tell his play was clear. His blunder graph indicates he was quite average player and he made several terrible mistakes coming perhaps from lack of practise in his recent years and fast play with only shallow analysis.

He attracted attention in the forums when he responded to a question about cheating. He wrote:

"sorry, what do you mean by cheating ? I do not suppose that the use of chess programs is forbidden!!!

We play correspondence chess, and everyone knows that almost everybody in that 'sport', 'asks' programs, at least from time to time.

So what else could cheating mean ?"

Yes, his amazement was real I suppose. He forgot to read site rules and he supposed engines are allowed as they are legal in ICCF. He quickly realized he was wrong, but we can see first signs of doubt as part of future rationalization:

"I think there is massive use of chess engines at all stages of the game on this site.

But I will follow the rule from now on. 

 I have to say that it is a very bad rule: you cannot prove BEYOND ANY DOUBT that someone used a program during the game.

That's why many players will never further follow the rule, and they will profit."

He was right that chess.com was a mess back then. The rest could be a matter of discussion and I would disagree with him wholeheartedly. Later he wrote:

"I admit to have used Fritz 8, since September 2008 (not before, I didn't have one !),  never without checking the variants 'he' suggested. I must also say that I have learned a lot from the 'conversation' with the program. In doing this, my rating increased from around 2100 to around 2350, in short time.

I decided to use the program because I didn't know it was forbidden. Since obviously to me, many of my opponents use programs, I didnt suspect doing something immoral, also because it is explicitely allowed in correspondence chess, and the overwhelming majority of correspondence players uses a program.

Now, unexpectedly for me, some people on this site feel hurt, which I regret, because they did have other expectations. I will therefore leave the site immediately, and not come back. I however hope you guys will discuss this and come to another conclusion sometime."

No matter he confused some dubious ICCF internal bad habits with rules of online and correspondence chess overall, I suspect here is the crucial point where the Light and Darkness started the battle of his soul. He regarded the no-computer rule as stupid, because he thought it cannot be detected and this helps cheaters. It would be relevant opinion, if cheating couldn't be detected. And he was wrong here, because he failed to realize cheating can be detected. Despite he left the site, he was invited back by Erik:

"i did not ask *** to leave the site. he is leaving on his own accord. i let him know that he could stay if he agreed to follow the rules as he clearly is a strong player."

So he came back with new account...
"I am back, with cleared rating, I will not use a computer anymore, may be I will not play at all, because so many others here use it!!!!"
And here it came. Not only he came back and resumed playing, he also made it to the top year later. Perhaps he couldn't stand derisive posts like this:

"You are just cranky because you miss your program."

"I leave now because i am a target of self-announced moral apostols."
Although he lost credibility in many eyes, I admit I felt sorry for him and I also believed he would take his promises seriously.

During the following months he didn't participate in discussion about cheating and concentrated on play instead. The problem was he failed to realize that cheating is huge offence, he underwent internal rationalization and came to conclusion cheating is something common, no-computer rule is for fools and beginners. As I will show you later, he joined The Dark Side and became dedicated cheater!

About a year later, Costelus wrote in the Cheating Forum group:

"Most likely player ABC realized quickly that at the top, all the players here use Rybka. Since nobody enjoys losing, he started checking his moves for blunders too. Another thing I noticed: ABC was very active in the forums, posting interesting chess-related things; XYZ never posted anything. Maybe he's trying to keep a low profile?"

ABC and XYZ are old and new accounts of our dude. Costelus continued:

"XYZ has nothing special. We could also call him Fruit 2.3, but at very high depths (at least 16-17). This appears to be his success story: running the engine for much longer periods of time than the "normal" players here."

Costelus checked his games in a primitive way: he let them run through an UCI with engine on the background. Our dude appeared soon - noticed by a fellow cheater Schachgeek - and responded:

"I realize that many of the people in this group are bad persons, and dont WANT to be convinced. Therfore i am leaving."

Such a complain! But I still felt it would have been huge loss if an excellent honest player had been driven out from the site by the mob so I wrote:

"Well, we should make a comparison. If XYZ has coincidence with computer higher than ABC (the same player occassionaly cheating), then it is clear he has cheated, falsely promised and lied.

But until anybody proves it, we should be polite.

Honestly i don't have much taste to do it."

I wrote the same to him in a private message. I recommended him to ask Steve Collyer to analyze his games by sound top3 method and clear the suspicion caused by Costelus.

He ignored it and left chess.com. Before this however, he stated his wife was unjustly banned for cheating and he didn't trust chess.com staff and members anymore.

I owed him this analysis, so I have completed it recently. The results of his new "honest" account:
(only from the last page of tournament games, 34 games with 30 or more moves, about 4-5 didn't make the cut)
top1 ... 584/843 ... 69.28 % (first account ... 45.43 %)
top2 ... 724/843 ... 85.88 % (first account ... 65.78 %)
top3 ... 782/843 ... 92.76 % (first account ... 78.76 %) ... 7.78 sd above average% of top human CC play

This is the proof of blatant engine contamination, the probability of such result obtained by honest excellent human play is 1 of 139,000,000,000,000. Costelus was right. Our Mr. F.B. falsely promised and cheated.

What is the moral of this story? There is none. Only perhaps lack of cane during his childhood.

List of VIPs caught cheating

(to be updated)

OTB-chess titled players and officials

CZERWOŃSKI Aleksander aka "alekroth", IM, Poland
DEMBO Yelena, WGM and IM, Greece

DOCX Stefan, FM, Belgium

KACAKOVSKI Dimitar, FM, Macedonia

TIRARD Hugo, IM, France

Correspondence chess titled players

HORVATH Alexander, ICCF SIM, Slovakia

WEYERSTRASS Ronald, ICCF IM, Netherlands

Politicians, municipality representatives, publicly active figures

JENICEK Emil, Litvinov, Czech Republic
VAUGHAN Stan, Nevada, USA

ZAVYALOV Volodymyr aka "Vovuha", Ukraine

Scientists & University Staff

Van ERP Pepijn aka "MamboVipi", Radbound University Nijmegen, Netherlands
MIKHAILOV Stepan aka "Massaraksh", Duke University, USA (formerly Russia)

MITCHELL Glenn, Florida State University, USA

WIKSTROM Marten, University of Helsinky, Finland

Cheater no.16: Hinda Sledziewski



Hinda Sledziewski aka Gala, online chess cheater and chess blogger

  Once upon a time I thought women are less prone to online chess cheating moral failure than men and cheating women are in fact mostly anonymous cross-gender boys. In some specific cases this might be true, chess.com had a lot of fake female cheating identities, e.g. completely forged identity Mariska-Angela (her photo comes from photosets of "Avril A", pornstar from Ukraine), fake Pauline van Nies (very likely not the real one), "retired model Kerrianne Smith, Chester, UK" (still active at Gameknot, her chess.com avatar comes from model Kristine Drinke, an ugly anorexic flat bugbear), mysterious Adora Helenoria aka Nefertity, plenty of short-lived cross-dressing recurring cheaters from Phillipines, Thailand, Brazil, Russia, Africa or Islamic countries, but in general I was proven wrong: Women tend to cheat as men, if not even more. This is the third real woman depicted here, next in line after Jasmin Nicoletta Goldmann and Yelena Dembo.

 I am going to spare readers from my usual colourful language towards cheaters this time, however I find necessary to point out: this lady is morally inferior one as all cheaters. Keep this in mind when reading her blogs and articles.

Moral aspects and future plans. Misinterpretations, Questions and Answers about this blog.

Visitors come around and express their negative opinions about this blog, stating how it is libellous, immoral, sick, full of hatred, repulsive etc. and hurting towards people who are either completely innocent or committed only little mischief, i.e. they cheated at some casual chess site in a few insignificant chess games where nothing was at the stake. Sometimes they even dispute decisions of chess.com or conclusions of other analysts, claiming the methodology has been flawed, analysts were biased, control data were obsolete etc. Sometimes they are quite arrogant making inappropriate demands ("Prove It!").

In my opinion, these visitors don't understand the seriousness of the problem and mission of this blog. Well, to clear the confusion, I have decided to adress several common misinterpretations and questions.

1. This blog is libellous
No, it isn't. Libels are always associated with untrue statements and claims. This is not the case here. People depicted here are cheaters and they were either banned from chess site for cheating, or their cheating has been confirmed by trustworthy analysis beyond any reasonable doubt.

2. Blog owner is sick person full of hatred
Let me answer this with counter-question: Were Jan Mydlar or Charles Henri Sanson sick and cruel persons full of hatred? I suppose they weren't. They were executing their chosen job. Villains committed violence and had to pay for it. The same goes here only with much less cruel methods (although I have both my own sharp medieval sword and fantasy dwarven double-edged axe ready). Important thing to remember: cheaters committed sick acts full of hatred, lacking respect for chess and opponents. I can't understand it. It is hard for me to look upon notorious cheaters as humans and not as morally bankrupted subhuman creatures.


3. This is disgusting
I agree. The whole topic of cheating in online chess is disgusting and it was a taboo for a long time. Unfortunately, it is about time to reveal it and it is fair. I am also sad how many people devoted themselves into cheating, how they underwent internal rationalization and how they often continue lying and being arrogant. Look, there are other controversial topics, e.g. abortions. Would it be disgusting to post names and photos of physicians who perform it? Yes. But it would be completely fair too.

4. Computers are allowed in modern correspondence/online chess
No, they aren't. Only a minority of servers/organisations permit computer assistance in games in progress, unfortunately ICCF is among them and this may create confusion. Two major online sites for correspondence-tempo chess (Chess.com and RedHotPawn.com) prohibit them. Internal habits and rules of ICCF do not matter outside. In fact, ICCF lost all credibility among real chess players with such lazy approach.

5. Cheating at free chess sites is only little mischief, because games shouldn't be taken too seriously there when nothing is at the stake
It depends, but in principle I disagree here. You can never tell how seriously your opponent takes it, so you must consider the possibility he/she takes it seriously and cheating would create big offense: the seriousness of online chess is completely subjective. In some cases, cheating may be considered only mistake or little mischief, when offender quickly realizes his/her misconception and leaves quickly without major damage. However many cheaters cheat in online tournament play, team matches and vote games for long time, in many games and deliberately. Cheaters depicted here belong to this category.
Not everyone plays for free, at least internet connection must be paid. Some members subscribe and become premium members and they are entitled to demand protection against cheaters. Playing a game against cheater or in a tournament with cheater(s) is usually waste of effort and time, it equals money too. Moreover, the whole future of internet correspondence chess is at the stake. More cheaters - it means less true strong honest chessplayers.

6. Cheating can't be proven (aka strong humans and computers aren't distinguishable)
This belief is widespread, but it has been refuted. Humans and computers do play differently: computers often make moves humans don't like and vice versa. This leads into positivity in top3 method. The difference between any two computers is almost always less significant than between any computer and any human. When ICCF decided not to ban computers in 1992 to keep the play fair, no top3 method was known and the statement was true. However things have made huge progress until then, mainly thanks to RedHotPawn's game moderators. Unfortunately, ICCF doesn't reflect that and still hesitates to introduce serious computer-free events.

7. The blog owner never posted any relevant data to support his claims
First, the output data sets are huge and the place is limited. Second, the format isn't suitable for reading without proper software. Of course, I store both output files and calculated results, so I am ready to prove my claims in court, if necessary.

8. Control data (CC-championships from 60' to 80') are obsolete, because human play evolves
Really? I answer: Nonsense! Opening moves are discarded and outside of theory such trend wasn't observed. The most computer-like player was Jose Raoul Capablanca, who had died 6 years before Alan Turing started writing first chess algorithm.
In fact, this is the most common lame excuse used by cheaters to dispute detection and clear suspicion. Of course, games from current correspondence and online chess must not be used as control data, because we can't assume unassisted play took place everytime. But the fact OTB play doesn't show such trend towards computers is enough to draw the same conclusion for unassisted human CC play.
I have observed would-be-clever cheaters, who tried hard to play like "human masters" by choosing "little inferior" computer moves and when they lost their games and were caught cheating as well, they defended themselves claiming they were in fact "more evolved" modern masters and victims of both, others true cheaters and "bugs" in cheat detection, coming from "obsolete" control data.

What are my future plans?

a) I am planning to upgrade my method of detection. The new method should be much quicker, less data-intensive and more entitled to use the binomial distribution approximation. The details I will post separately.

b) I have found the current approach 1 cheater = 1 page quite ineffective. Executed villains usually don't have gravestone monuments each, mass graves are more suitable for them. So I am going to delete most of pages devoted to individual cheaters and create a few constantly updated pages with more names and short infos. At least two pages will remain however: Wikström and Dembo, because they are quite exceptional.

c) And finally, maybe (just maybe) I will open another blog(s) some day devoted to real chess and other interests, not idiotic cheaters.