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(Electronic) doping in chess

2021-08-23T12:34:53.198Z


Computer-aided cheating that surpasses the world champion is now the great danger Illustration from 'Kempelen's Turk.' Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty There is no known case of a chess player who has improved his performance with illegal substances. But electronic doping (especially in online tournaments) is a serious problem. There are ways to alleviate it; effective for the moment. But what will happen when it is normal to have a chip implanted i


Illustration from 'Kempelen's Turk.' Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty

There is no known case of a chess player who has improved his performance with illegal substances.

But electronic doping (especially in online tournaments) is a serious problem.

There are ways to alleviate it;

effective for the moment.

But what will happen when it is normal to have a chip implanted in the brain?

In fact, chess chess related to machines already existed in the 18th century.

More information

  • The word 'robot' turns a century

  • Chess, the great metaphor of the world

The list of prohibited substances that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) applies to chess - recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee - is the same as for the other disciplines. A player who is also a bodybuilder can test positive for an anabolic, whose consumption does not influence his performance at the board at all. If you are very nervous and take a beta-blocker, it will help you calmly and accurately assess, plan, and calculate; But when the time constraints come (few minutes for many plays) and you need a very fast brain, it is very likely that the beta-blocker will make you lose the game. And the opposite would happen if he took an amphetamine for extreme fatigue: he would not be able to think calmly because he would be like a motorcycle.

As with gene doping (changing muscles on demand in professional sports), it is possible that substances that improve brain performance without these counterproductive effects are already being tested, and it has not yet transpired. But what has been worrying in the world of chess, for 25 years, is not that. A player can hide in his ear a microphone that fools metal detectors, by which a friend is blowing him the best moves with the help of programs that calculate millions per second (for 15 years, the best chess player in the world has not it's a human). Even more serious: one of the greatest advantages of chess, very popular during the pandemic, is that it can be practiced online; but then the traps are much more difficult to detect.

As in athletics, cycling, and other sports, science is always faster than law.

But there are also effective methods - although not 100% - in the mental sport: algorithms that calculate the percentage of plays that coincide with those that the best silicon chess players would make;

if it is very high in several games of the same tournament, the investigated is a genius or a cheater, and the difference usually becomes clear soon.

Assistants to the duel between the Deep Blue machine and the world champion Gary Kasparov, in 1997 in New York.

Photo: Getty Images

If we are talking about professional telematic chess or high-level amateurs (for example, the World School Tournament Expo Dubai, recently organized by the Spanish Pavilion with 2,600 teenagers from 53 countries), other measures must also be taken. Each player is monitored by two cameras: one, rear, shows the screen where the game is played and its surroundings, as well as their hands; the other, frontal, his face; In addition, he has to share his screen with the referee through a specific program, and the cameras must have the audio activated to verify that no one is blowing plays or giving advice. Even with all that, there are penalties for cheating, but in a manageable number, for now. Among other reasons, because it would be absurd for an elite player to risk throwing his prestige away - and with it,tens or hundreds of thousands of euros each year - for improving your results.

Cheating in machine chess goes back a long way.

It would be fun to take out of his grave the famous Austro-Hungarian (today it would be Slovak) engineer and inventor of the 18th century Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804), to whom Edgar Allan Poe dedicated an essay, and see what face he makes when observing all that paraphernalia .

The creation that made him immortal was a machine, dressed in Turkish clothes, that played chess on exhibitions by various European courts.

The

Turk of Kempelen

won, among others, Napoleon and Catherine the Great.

And later, on a tour of America with the late Kempelen, Benjamin Franklin and many more.

A low hidden chess player

The trap was a tall, very short chess player hiding inside. It was not discovered for decades by the great intelligence of Kempelen, who, thanks to a precise set of mirrors, opened the doors on all four sides of the machine without showing anything suspicious. And he lit chandeliers at the top to hide the smoke from the candle that illuminated the hidden player.

If Kempelen, inspirer of the Spanish inventor Leonardo Torres Quevedo, did not die of fright again, we would have to tell him what is coming: chips inserted into the brain, which will be very useful, for example, to discover or prevent diseases.

Presumably installing a silicon chess player there will be a breeze.

Therefore, the professional tools of the chess referees will include a detector and deactivator of these gadgets in each tournament, in person or online.

Fascinating world that is already around the corner.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-08-23

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