How did I save Team of Suriname

Once upon a time ... there was an evil ugly online chess cheater. He has been a photographer and regarded himself an artist.

His name was Dirk Van Appeldorn.

He created an account and cheated like subhuman monsters like him usually do. He thought he would get recognition with high rating. Unfortunately for him things didn't go that smoothly as he expected. His rating ceased to go up quickly - surprisingly he ran into other cheaters and really good players and his results weren't that good. Even worse for him - after the Big Ban event in August 2011 many team league and vote chess organizers realized the awful truth about cheating and refused to act as useful idiots anymore. The desired recognition didn't come and people became suspicious instead.

But our cheater knew a way. He abandoned his old account and created a brand new one. He combined his chess desires with his sexual perversions and with usefulness together and forged a profile as young woman now - his disabled daughter.

fake-Carola's fake photo (user: CaroWerlknack)

Abusing anonymity and using soft "feminine weapons" under female disguise, posting his own-made and copied photos, together with decent online rating (but carefully kept bellow the range of blatant cheating) he managed to deceive the naive community a lot. He even spent a few bucks and bought premium membership to avoid cheat suspicion and get the right to manage groups as superadmin.

Now little intermezzo about general naivety on chess.com. People tend to be gullible a lot. They trust others without checking, cheaters are often regarded as great players, fake women are loved and real good honest players are rare and quite ignored. The community was long time led either by complete useful idiots (kokino, mkaalam, king_arif, chess_kebabs) or even by cheaters themselves (Stefan1Zamfir). The situation however is not getting any better now: although the above ceased their disservices, new ignorant activists have appeared, e.g. BillyBantine, who decided to run "championships" without any entry barrier against cheaters and accepting anonymous players, "surprisingly" his recent so-called "World Championship" got spoiled by cheating a lot. Nothing can enrage me more than idiot cheater with ambitions to participate as leader of online chess community - this is just unacceptable for me.

Back to our topic: Exactly this I noticed here. The monster created two groups - GLOBETROTTERS & EXPATS and Team SURINAME international - recruited members and pretended criticism of avoiding team matches by other teams in forums. And here (s)he was spotted by me, the furious dangerous Polar_Bear.

I recommended "her" being trustworthy - use real name and biography, but immediately after this his ("her") reactions were suspicious, so I became nosey and studied "her" profile in detail. I found the female photos there were just gathered mostly from around the web. Soon the original old account was found and T3-method revealed the real source of "her" chess moves. When our cheater renamed his old account to avoid connections, things became crystal clear. Report ticket followed, however it took some time, but after re-submitting it by kohai our story ended. Both accounts were closed for cheating.

I should mention there is still one account I suspect to be his sockpuppet and backup: GreatestPuemmi. He didn't intend to cheat with this account and I can't prove connection, but go figure: Weird attempt in forums says it all.

[Edit 04-28-2014]
It came out our mysterious Dirk had to leave Europe for Uruguay - not because he loves to travel and photograph, but rather because he had been involved in quackery. No surprise for me here. Operating under name Dirk Budka and using greatly exaggerated and self-styled qualification credentials he ran advisory centre in The Hale Clinic of London. Alternative medicine is legal in the UK until proven fraud. The Hale Clinic focuses on holistic healthcare, bioresonance and other various dubious methods outside of evidence-based medicine. Budka-/-Appeldorn focused himself on allergy, metabolism and nutrition, but he had to drop it and go into hiding at some point in the past when he was revealed as quacksalver and fraud. I know no details, but his scheme allegedly included trousering patient's money for fake blood tests he had never done.

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.

Cheater no.15: Edward Hunting

Edward Hunting, online chess cheater

E-mail: ehunting@iname.com
His Facebook page
His promotional webpage

This immoral ugly codger ceased to be chess player, when he used chess programs to assist him play despite he subscribed agreement with the rules. Original, isn't it? Actually, there were/are hundreds of similar bastards like him. And like some others, he flashed back with new account to make idiotic statement and pretend grievance.

Cheater no.14: Zdenek Kovar (Zdeněk Kovář)

Zdenek Kovar: professional photographer and online chess cheater

His phone numbers:

+420 602 330 547

+420 283 871 668

His known e-mail adresses:

sidon.kovar@volny.cz

sidkov@klikni.cz

hodinky@fotoburzapraha.cz
info@kcmeandr.cz

What to say more about him? I extremely dislike him for his bastard's immorality. Not only he cheated, but he cheated in serious tournaments and team matches too, moreover he undermined chess.com community by his social activities, especially in Team of the Czech Republic group. He had understood very well his untrustworthy status of high-rated unknown player and he made serious effort to make friends all over. How? He bought premium membership, so he could run and participate in several tournaments, he pretended concern for team matches (however he lost intentionally several match games to avoid cheat detection), he used Copy_&_Paste method to "write" articles and he was always ready to discuss with others using popular language. This worked for some time and by mistake he was made an admin of Czech Team.

The whole situation was about to change, when Polar_Bear woke up from winter sleep this springtime and re-opened his batch analyzer. :o) Because I have been admin too, I fired several team cheaters. In the discussion which followed (sorry, sidone's posts have disappeared), sidone showed lack of chess player's honour, considering fired cheaters victims of my pride. Analysis of sidone followed. :o) Although I was sure from the past that sidone was cheater too, the result was inconclusive at first. The problem was he cheated in sophisticated way: he controlled his moves with computer, but he chose often a minor move outside of top choice, especially in decided situations. And he threw away some games by blunders. However when I improved my analysis excluding situations outside of +- 3 pawn unit interval, he came out positive: 2.84 sd above expected value. Superadmin Kyticka666 stripped him off his admin status fired him out. The definitive end came on 3rd August during so-called "Big Ban", when all cheaters fired from Czech Team were banned from chess.com for cheating, including Mr. Zdenek Kovar aka sidone.

Well, this cheater was dangerous, because he spent effort building his social status as great human chess player sneaking into community of real chess players and trying to hide his cheating.

Cheater no.13: Alexander Horvath

Alexander Horvath, online chess cheater

In the recent wave of bannings, this guy from Slovakia had to go. It was no surprise for me, because I analyzed him and already knew he cheated like crazy: From 18 games, Top3 424/452, 5.21 sd above expected value. I reported him, put him on the Blacklist, blocked him at Chess.com and waited. And waited, and waited, and waited... until 3rd August, when Big Ban came and about 700 cheaters had to go.

From the large mass of recently banned cheating idiots, this dude is exceptional in three things:
- this computer monkey brags about holding ICCF Senior International Master "title", however he never adds when he achieved it, current ICCF players really aren't successors of the ancient pre-computer ones
- he started to organize a riot against chess.com, he claims he was falsely accused, banned and lost money for his premium membership
- he was impudent enough to come back with new accounts and argue in the forums.

What is the conclusion? He is caught cheater, liar, braggart and windbag. It is a big shame for ICCF and The Correspondence Chess Association of the Slovak Republic to have such members.

Edit 11/21/2015:
This cheater died in August 2013.

Carefully optimistic

The owner of Chess.com, Erik Allebest, announced changes. He realized his site is heavily spoiled by cheats and decided to employ trained statistician to detect them. He estimates about 1000 accounts to be closed.

It was about time. Chess.com had for long a reputation of a site, where it was possible cheat and test engines, and this brought new wave of cheaters, who just cheat without shame and bad conscience. It repulses real chess players of course. Chess.com was banning cheaters, but it took very long time in each case. Considering that average user has no tools, no time and no knowledge to distinguish strong honest human player from a cheater and tournament directors have limited powers to act, this is indeed necessary.

Erik made promises in the past a lot, but nothing significant happened yet. A lot of cheaters were banned, but even more cheaters appeared and despite the fact they were very easy to detect, staff allowed them to stay for very long time. While in the year 2008 the average lifetime of a cheat was about 4 months, it became more than 1 year in correspondence section recently. The site has ten times more members, but limited resources. Staff wastes them to detect cheats in Live Chess section, however there are many cheaters who register for free without any profile in a minute, cheat and leave. This is not a job for a site administrator, but rather for a bot. The correspondence section became sad wasteland, where many good players either left or became cheaters too.

Another bad thing for a community are "useful idiots". I mean group league organizers, who don't care about cheating. Usually they are weak players and they don't bother with checking members. Sometimes they even invite obvious cheats into their groups and tournaments they run. They can't take responsibility and they are lazy to ask for reference or cheat detection. All prestigious tournaments are spoiled by cheaters, but who cares?

Who cares when "nothing" is at stake?

The whole future of correspondence chess is at stake! ICCF didn't even try. Hopefully Erik has become wise and will eventually purge Chess.com from this nasty garbage in the next 6 weeks how he promised.

Edit 08/04/2011:

The rumble of rolling skulls started!

Blacklist of active known chess cheaters

This page will be updated. You can write me further on my e-mail ZMartin@email.cz.

alekroth64
Aleksander Czerwoński, already caught idiot cheater from Poland who created new account, maybe with approval from the staff, but definitely without public remorse and without an approval from online chess community.

billwall
William Dale Wall, known US chess figure. He cheated at Chess.com during the "Dark Era" 2009-2010, top3 678/735, z-score +6.90, after Big Ban he sandbagged his rating down.

Janosik
Falko Bindrich, cheater banned from Playchess.com, living in Zittau. He was awarded with some titles by FIDE in the past, but he is not worthy anymore to use them of course. His chess.com "play": 14 games, top3 406/434, 5.01 sd above expected value.

osama98
Allegedly from Syria, but there are signs from other locations, e.g. this or this one, just typical mendacious noname, impersonating a bit. Typical cheater's profile. 20 games, top3 635/700, 4.31 total standard deviations above expected value.

pfren
Panayotis Frendzas, retired IM. Big bragger and chess.com forum troll. Promoter of LSS chess server and computer-assisted correspondence chess. His statistics: Top3 478/518, z-score +6.25.

simplechess
A FIDE Master Andreas Van Elst from France. Inactive now: stopped playing slow chess right after titled cheaters Dembo and Docx were banned and widely discussed. 37 games, top3 1181/1293, 5.55 standard deviations above expected value.

Cheater no.12: Mircea Hrubaru

Mircea Hrubaru, chess software tester and former cheater.

This is quite ancient case. Mircea Hrubaru from Constanta (Romania) got banned in February 2009 from Chess.com, because he was found to be cheating. We cannot say whether he did it deliberately or by mistake, or he just came to conclusion, looking at top rated players (altogether mostly cheaters), that no-computer rule is not obligatory, but the output was quite strict and clear. Needles to say, he learned from it and became member of FICGS, minor playing site, where engines are allowed.

Interesting things followed then, however. First, the member who reported him (Costelus) got fired from Team Romania and then Romana Chisu, the superadmin of Team Romania and chess journalist, opened thread in forums called Petition for MirceaH, where clique of naive Romanian members tried to persuade staff to revoke the ban. It is worthy to read.

Cheater no.11: Richard Kudla

Richard Kudla aka Richmond1906, chess arbiter and online chess cheater

This guy used to be no.1 top rated Czech Team player at Chess.com, until i decided enough is enough. I analyzed his games and analysis confirmed my suspicions. I used my administrator privileges to kick him, because it is a shame when country is represented on the 1st board by cheater. I reported him straight too and to my surprise, it took only 3 days until he was banned.

The historical paradox is that he is not only known local chessplayer from Ostrava, but he is 2nd class national chess arbiter too. The whole case shows he didn't take no-computer rule seriously if he even knew it (possible influence of Czech chess site Hogan, where such rule doesn't exist, and Czech correspondence chess federation, which adopted the lazy ICCF approach and tolerates computer assistance).

Among his others online activities, he kibitzes in online chess broadcastings, he plays poker online and seeks for women to date. It seems he has plenty of spare time.

His e-mail: r.kudla@centrum.cz

Methodology and statistics used in revealing cheaters

Because doubters appear here, i have decided to make things clear once and forever.

The root of inspiration is methodology used by RedHotPawn game mods, reintroduced by Steve Collyer to the public in 2009 in the infamous Ouachita's case at Chess.com.

Original method uses any modern chess engine (e.g. Fritz10, Fritz11, Rybka etc) running under fixed time condition, usually 30 seconds, showing top choices. Manually feasible with stopwatch in almost any UCI. RHP game mods used this to support their suspicion of engine smell with something more robust than just some uncertain feelings. They analyzed many top OTB and especially pre-computer era correspondence games to obtain values for honest play. After testing many games with many engines, they made an estimation of top amateur human correspondence honest play as top1 max. 60%, top2 max. 75% and top3 max. 85%. To avoid false positives, they added +5% and declared that everyone above 65%, 80% and/or 90% on reasonable big sample (at least 400 moves, recommended 20 games with 20 non-book moves each against solid opposition) is blatant cheater. They created program called Batch Analyzer to perform such analysis automatically.

Well inspired, i downloaded another analyzer here, paid for full version (weird, isn't it?) and went my own way. The main difference is that i decided to use fixed depth of engine Firebird instead of fixed time.

I analyzed XI. WCCh (1983 - 1988, winner Friedrich Baumbach, 15 players) to obtain benchmarks. I should mention, the main parameter to be watched is Top3.

Obtained results:
Top3 ... 3809 of 4587 moves => 83.04 %
Theoretical calculated binomial standard deviation of the whole sample ... 0.55 %

Calculated residual individual standard deviation by players ... 0.92 % (pythagorean difference between individual total and individual binomial standard deviation)

Total standard deviation of suspect is pythagorean sum of three parts:
constant 0.55 % (binomial benchmark)
constant 0.92 % (residual, considering minor inadequacy of binomial model and differences in playing style)
player's sample binomial (inverse-proportional to square-root of number of analyzed moves)

Forced and obvious moves are used in both, benchmark sample and analyzed sample of suspect. There is no reason to assume that in online chess are these moves more frequent than in ancient correspondence and can create significant bias. Playing styles prefering more forced moves and inadequacy of binomial model are considered in the pythagorean sum of deviations (see above).

The reasonable cut-off line is +2.5 total standard deviations, which is about 99th percentile in the case the player in question is pre-computer correspondence chess grandmaster (most of them obviously aren't and even Docx and Dembo should be considered as much weaker correspondence players than XI. ICCF finalists).

The minimum total standard deviation is 1.07 % for sample with infinite number of moves.

Thus players with Top3 under 85.72 % are considered as undetectable with this method. :o)

The first possible source of bias is opening theory checked & created with computer assistance nowadays. Non-book moves are cut, but so are first 3 nonbook moves to avoid bias from pre-game preparation with computer and private knowledge of a player in his/her pet opening, checked by computer.

Another possible source of bias is the fact that online players today play very often until checkmated, while ancient correspondence players always resigned, because postal cards were somewhat expensive, especially in international competitions. Thus the game is considered determined, when the evaluation exceeds 3 pawn units and rest is cut. However even after these two cuts, there must remain at least 17 moves, shorter games are either show-draws or low quality opposition.

Edit 29th April: Graph of benchmark data, 15 players Top3 statistics. Note: number of moves they played is signicantly lower than number of moves played by suspects, thus the variation is higher.

Cheater no.10: Jose Maria Lasso Frias

Jose Maria Lasso Frias, online chess cheater and prattler

One of many similar unimportant internet garbage men. He spent some time talking in the forums of Susan Polgar's chess blog, later he couldn't stand his unvalued status and decided to prove his chess skills in online chess. He went the easiest way, joined The Dark Side and became cheater. Caught in 19th April 2011. End of story. He learned nothing, ended up with nothing, only wasted plenty of his time spoiling community of others, real chessplayers, and destroyed fun of many others.

Cheater no.9: Miroslav Gazi

Miroslav Gazi, chess cheater and "correspondence chessplayer"

The overbearance and ignorance of some ICCF "players" can be really astonishing. This Slovakian guy registered at Chess.com in December 2009 and as usual, he didn't bother with no-computer rule. No wonder. Numbskulls like him don't understand english or are too lazy to read. Moreover, even if he had read and understood, he would perhaps have ignored it: why to bother with such "obsolete" and "impractical" rule.

It hit him like a cold shower when he got banned in September 2010, coincidentally about the same time as Yelena Dembo. Was it unfair? Yes, his cheating behaviours were ultimately unfair. His ban was fair however and he deserved it. However thanks to his exceptional impudence, he immediately returned under new account, which was closed again in January 2011. And he deserves much more than just closed anonymous accounts of course. This page will serve as exemplary memorial for him and similar haughty idiots.

Well, Mr. Gazi, if you read this: pray to never meet me in real. I really don't like immoral cheaters like you.

His Facebook page.

Cheater no.8: Yelena Dembo

Cheater Yelena Dembo, former WGM and IM

I can't find proper words sometimes to describe cheaters. Well, how would you describe total trash using secretly computer against you on a chess site openly prohibiting it, moreover when she is in real life a FIDE titled player who should lead by example instead? Idiot or moron? No, because her brain has way stronger output and it would be seriously unfair towards mentally retarded people who aren't responsible for their poor condition and who are usually fair. Asshole? It looks better, however i am not sure whether this word can target women. Once i had a talk with my roommate about vulgarisms in English. He told me he had an English slang dictionary where the level of obscenity was expressed by the number of stars * behind the word or phrase. Only one word in the whole dictionary had the highest four stars **** obscenity level. Yes, this is endeed the proper word to describe Yelena Dembo's character in one word expression.

Our story can be seen from several perspectives. About four years ago, Dembo got busted from GameKnot chess site without publicly revealed reason, but it seems likely she used to cheat with chess engine to reach elite status. Why did she do that? She promoted herself as chess author this way: she wrote a book about Gruenfeld Indian Defense and she wanted to increase sales. After this "misapprehension", she became a Chess.com member. As titled player she immediately got free premium membership there and a place where she could promote her books, her's family Krinos hotel and offer coach lessons.

From my own perspective, it started in May this year. I had downloaded a cheat-analyzer a few weeks ago and i was curious how would OTB-skilled player's statistics look like. I downloaded her games, input them into analyzer and went to sleep. I couldn't believe my eyes in the morning! Yelena Dembo matched computer choices about 10% higher than expected! Just an explanation: +5% is widely considered as safe line to avoid false positives and some minor uncertainity coming from pre-game preparation with computer. I was stunned, but i reported her: I am realist in such cases and i don't believe in computer-like playing humans. Ms. Dembo simply let her Rybka play instead of her. Whether Chess.com took my report seriously, i don't know, but for the next 3 months, as usual, nothing happened. She became a target again later, repeatedly reported by other analysts and she was banned on 17th September 2010.

Her account - closed for cheating, unfortunately not available anymore

The end? No, because this puss was cheeky enough to threaten Chess.com with lawsuit! Just imagine! She got a free premium account, place to write her blog and promote herself, but she cheated and when caught she threatened with lawsuit. Chess.com owner decided to step back and removed the "for cheating" clause.

But let us remember forever:

YELENA DEMBO IS DESPICABLE ONLINE CHESS CHEATER!

Cheater no.7: Emil Jenicek



Emil Jenicek

This blackguard is known as member of doubtful political party called ODS in the northern Czech city of Litvinov. Because i don't live there, i cannot give you detailed informations about his goings-on, but he is:

- executive head of TransControl group, quite fishy trading company without clear article, perhaps also interested in connection between municipality and shadow gangland via corruption

- member od ODS (Obcanska Demokraticka Strana -> Civilian Democratic Party), a doubtful party sponsored by shadow enterprisers and venal companies

- member and co-founder of civil society called Koreny (The Roots)

He used to be chessplayer with the strength of national Candidate Master, that means he was better than Sladovnik. His online chess activities are unknown until 1st September 2008, when he joined Chess.com under nickname ManuChena. What a surprise, this asshole decided to ignore the rule about computers and became cheater. Because he didn't play so frequently, it took whole year and half (!) when they finally banned him in February 2010.

His Youtube channel

Contact: Emil Jenicek,
Vrchlickeho 862, 435 11 Lom,
his phone number: (+420) 608 555 828

company phone number: (+420) 476 767 167

e-mail: jenicek@transcontrol.cz