Saturday, November 10, 2012

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.