what does good old history have to say?
The recent rave arising from the Carlsen vs. Hans game has turned the chess world on its head! and quite rightly so. The 19 year old Grandmaster, Hans has been directly and indirectly accused of cheating but it still beats me (like many others) as to how anyone can cheat OTB at the highest level of chess and with the level of sophistication of anti-cheating technology coupled with hardcore body scanners which can be quite embarrassing to be honest...but cheating and cheating allegations are not new to the royal game, there have been several interesting cases and the Carlsen-Hans will not be the last. Indeed, it suffices to say that the cheating phenomenom will remain with us for a thousand years (shout out to my fellow G.O.A.T fans)
So, flow with me, lets take a ride down memory lane. The most comical of cheating allegations occurred during the Match of the Century in 1972 when Geller who happened to be spassky second then pointed fingers accusing Fischer's companions of disturbing Spassky`s concentration using chemical and electronic means. In effect, the Russians said, the hall was Bobby‐trapped they began asking several crazy questions like had Fischer put in his own lighting? Why did Fischer always insist on using his own chair? What were the Americans doing so often in Exhibition Hall at the dead of night, when all honest, respectable chess players should be in bed dreaming happily of the Exchange Variation of the Ruy Lopez? In response, the Icelandic police brought in a chemist and an electronics engineer, they later swept the tournament hall of electronic devices and found 2 dead flies in the lighting system!! but the accusers did not stop there as expected, they insisted that the flies be dissected and analysed like a game of chess. Did they die a natural death? Or had an American death ray put an end to them? Or was their death a result of tasting the Poisoned Pawn Sicilian?...at the end of the day, the poker faced Boris Spassky lost to the eccentric Mr. 1 e4! Fischer. The preposterous accusations was none of Spassky's doing, but Icelanders were saying that the Russians were poor losers...same description might apply to poor Maggie who has recently been spanked twice by Hans with the black pieces.
Another comical accusation of cheating was during the World Championship in Baguio City when Victor Korchnoi accused Anatoly Karpov of cheating by drinking yoghurt in several colors suggesting that these were signals. Also, I understand that both camps employed leading hypnotists to”bother” each other with Karpov employing a certain Dr. Zukhar and Korchnoi hiring a member of a local cult who was accused of murder.
Even our sublime friends (chess computers) are not spared on this cheating matter. You may recall the allegation by the Beast of Baku, Garry Kasparov that he was cheated by IBM in his loss to the computer program Deep Blue in 1997. This assertion shocked the entire chess world who could not believe that IBM would do such a thing - Kaspy claimed that there was human interference in the 2nd game won by Deep Blue when the machine refused to move to a position that had a decisive short-term advantage, showing a very human sense of danger. Again, at the end of the day, it was Kaspy who lost, his unfounded allegations were dismissed. The match went on to make history! it was the first defeat of a reigning world chess champion by a computer under tournament conditions, and was the subject of a documentary film, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine, a good watch I would recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it.
Still going further down in history ref the cheating variation Some of us may have heard about The Turk, it was a fraudulent chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the machine. With a skilled operator, the Turk won most of the games played during its demonstrations around Europe and the Americas for nearly 84 years, playing and defeating many leading challengers including senior statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin!
So having looked backwards, one should ask, is Carlsen just being a sore loser like his predecessors before him (Spassky and Kaspy et al), did boy Hans really cheat OTB? if yes, how? as a digital man, the only logical possibility that makes sense to me, is that the singularity has occured earlier than we anticipated? (for the uninitiated, the singularity refers to a point in the future where man and machine will exist as one), is Hans one of Elon Musk's guinea pigs for his Neuralink project which intends to insert chips in human brains ala' singularity? or is boy Hans just simply the newest kid on the block and the future of chess...I guess only the future will tell, we will be here eagerly awaiting a verdict but one thing is for sure, this will not be the last high level cheating allegation in chess, they will be many more and they will continue for a thousand years, even after the singularity occurs, even with stockfish or alpha zero inserted in our brains, we will still accuse each other of cheating in chess...so, lets sit tight and watch events as the Carlsen-Hans story continues to evolve with each passing day...
