Cheating in Chess – computer misuse?

As computers have become more powerful in playing chess, its misuse in professional chess is also increasing. Using a wireless or bluetooth device to communicate and get best moves from a remote computer seems too tempting for many players!

Recently Umakant Sharma (an Indian chess player), who was caught with wireless device during the tournament, was banned for 10 years by The All India Chess Federation.

Umakant Sharma was caught with a blue tooth device hidden in his cap when random checking was conducted during the seventh round of the Air Marshal Subroto Mukerjee Memorial All India Open FIDE Rating Chess Tournament.

Sharma, top seeded with ELO 2384, was playing with black pieces against International Master Rahul Shetty.

Recently a chess cheating conference was held in New York. It looked at various aspects of computer based cheating in chess. From the news article,

Bathroom visits also figured prominently in a series of public accusations hurled last month during the World Chess Championship match between Bulgarian Veselin Topalov and Russian Vladimir Kramnik. Cheating charges leveled against Kramnik by Topalov’s manager and publicist were widely covered by the mainstream press. They almost caused the contest to abort mid-way through, when officials responded to the complaint by denying Kramnik the use of his private bathroom, and Kramnik in turn refused to continue playing. (He ultimately relented and went on to win the match.)

So probably in the near future all major chess events are going to be magnetically shielded(!) to prevent such cheating.