A top chess player is disqualified after a phone is found in a toilet cubicle

A top chess player was expelled from an event in Spain this week after being accused of cheating by using a phone during toilet breaks between moves.

The player, Kirill Shevchenko, went to the toilet for extended periods of time during matches, and officials who searched the stall he had used found a phone that could have been used to get help from a computer program.

Shevchenko, 22, a Ukrainian grandmaster who represents Romania in competitions, was kicked out of the event, a team chess championship in Spain, on Monday after the phone was found.

The phone found in the bathroom had a handwritten note on it that read: ‘Do not touch! This phone was left for the owner to answer at night!” according to the tournament’s chief referee, Oscar Bruno de Prado Rodriguez, as reported in Chess.com.

The handwriting resembled Shevchenko’s and the ink resembled that of a pen he used, Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported. The newspaper also reported that Shevchenko had made several movements very quickly, apparently without any reflection, immediately after returning from the bathroom.

A day earlier, a cleaner had found a phone in the bathroom, which had been handed in to the authorities, according to El Mundo.

Shevchenko drew in the first two rounds of the event, but after being ejected, both matches turned into losses.

Shevchenko, who is currently ranked 69th in the world by the International Chess Federation, could not be reached for comment.

The Romanian Chess Federation said in a statement that Shevchenko had denied the allegations and that it would support him unless it had more information.

“Such serious allegations must necessarily be supported by solid evidence, and so far only circumstantial evidence has been made public,” the statement said. “We await the details of the case and will carefully review the accompanying evidence.”

FIDE, as the International Chess Federation is known, said in an email on Wednesday that it had not received a report on the incident but expected one soon. It said it would investigate the incident and noted it had the right to impose sanctions on Shevchenko if he was found guilty.

In modern times, chess computers, easily accessible through mobile electronic devices, play the game far better than any unaided human. The turning point in computer chess came in 1997 when the world champion, Garry Kasparov, was defeated by a computer called Deep Blue. And today’s computers are still significantly better.

Grandmasters regularly use these computers to train and prepare for competitions, but playing over-the-board should only be a test of the human intellect.

Cheating is not an unknown phenomenon in the chess world. In the most notable incident in recent years, Magnus Carlsen, then a world champion, lost to a player named Hans Niemann during a competition in St. Louis in 2022, and subsequently withdrew from the tournament.

Carlsen’s abrupt withdrawal, plus a cryptic message he posted on social media, led to speculation that he believed Niemann had cheated. When the two players faced each other shortly afterwards, Carlsen resigned after one move, apparently in protest. Niemann was never sanctioned, although he admitted to cheating in online matches years earlier.

During the 2006 World Championship, Veselin Topalov claimed that Vladimir Kramnik had cheated, citing frequent toilet breaks. Officials responded by closing each man’s private bathroom and requiring them to use a communal facility. Kramnik lost one match in protest, but ultimately won a close match.

During the 1978 World Cup, long before computers could even come close to the best human game, Viktor Korchnoi suggested that Anatoly Karpov might be cheating through yogurt. Karpov regularly received yogurt delivered during matches; Korchnoi said he believed the taste of the yogurt or the time it was delivered could be a signal from Karpov’s camp to take a certain step.

Ultimately it was determined that yogurt could be delivered, but only at exactly 7:15 PM. – ©2024 The New York Times Company