One player dragged an accused cheater out of the bathroom
Chess players shouldn’t have any more interaction between each other than the pre-and-post game handshake and them touching the same pieces, but a reported 2013 situation between one Irish player and his young opponent accused of cheating got very physical. According to reports from Irish newspapers, during the Cork Congress Chess Open one moderator learned a 16-year-old player had been cheating using an Android device to figure out their next move while sitting on the toilet.
Gabriel Mirza, a Romanian chess player who had played against the teen, then allegedly kicked in the stall door and dragged the young player out into the hotel where the event was taking place until organizers from the Irish Chess Union stopped him. The Irish national police service known as Garai were called in to intervene. The teen, who has remained unnamed to this day, was banned from the Irish chess scene for four months. The then-48-year-old Mirza was banned for 10 months. A separate disciplinary committee confirmed the teen had been cheating using an “electronic device.”
