A young player went to the trouble of disguising his chess cheating program on a PDA
One player went beyond squirreling their phone away while on the toilet to cheat at chess. As detailed by a report by the online magazine Grantland, a player disguised his chess cheating program during a 2012 Virginia Scholastic and Collegiate Chess Tournament. During a weekend of games, a young man named Clark Smiley was winning game after game, but during one of the later games a scorekeeper noticed something strange about Smiley’s between move behavior.
Players were allowed to use a device and the eNotate app to keep track of their score and positions. Smiley had reportedly been using a handheld Dell PDA, but when the scorekeeper asked to see the device the young player quickly turned it off, but did finally hand it over. On the device were a list of Fritz brand computer chess engines. Smiley was suspended from the Virginia Chess Federation. It’s unclear if he was ever handed a lifetime ban from the U.S. Chess Federation, but the fact that it was ever considered points to just how seriously major chess organizations have had to take cheating using technology, and how far these programs have come in the decade since Smiley’s denouncement.
