'Cheating pays if it wins game'

21 April 2015 - 02:15 By Ross Tucker

Gaioz Nigalidze, a 25-year-old Grandmaster from Georgia, rocked the game of chess recently when he was accused of using a computer program on a cellphone to cheat during the championships in Dubai. Nigalidze, the chess champion of his country but ranked only 400th in the world, was playing against Tigran Petrosian, who became suspicious of his frequent trips to the bathroom. Officials searched the bathroom and found, hidden under toilet paper, the cellphone.Nigalidze, it is alleged, was sneaking off to memorise the possible moves his opponent might make in response to his, and using that to advance his game. This is not difficult for a Grandmaster to do - chess players are well-known for their ability to memorise chess boards.Nigalidze was disqualified from the match and there are calls for him to be stripped of his Grandmaster title. He might be handed a potential 15-year ban.The thing that struck me about the case was not necessarily the cheating, but the reaction from the chess community that it happened at all. Cheating at chess, they say, is pointless because the "thrill of the game is mental stimulation".The appeal to some intrinsic moral standard is a common strategy to dissuade cheats. "It's only worth winning if you do it fairly" and "The only person you're cheating is yourself" are two of the variants on this theme.There's something almost charmingly naïve in those beliefs because, though I wish they were true, the reality of professional sport is that cheating often does pay, and the manner in which victory is achieved has become immaterial.Those who decide to push the limits of performance, whether in chess, cycling, football or any other sport, do so knowing that, once they have exhausted all the available legal avenues, illegal ones remain. In such situations, the desire to perform will often outweigh what I wish were the more common virtues of honesty and integrity. But because sport is competitive, there exists a perception that "if I don't do this, my opponent will", and a race to the bottom of the moral low-ground ensues.The only deterrents are the likelihood and severity of punishment, and these are rarely adequate. Sure, there are cases where cheats have been exposed. Cyclist Lance Armstrong, for example, was demoted from cancer survivor to exhibit A by the "cheating does not pay" brigade. But he still lives comfortably today, having made millions in his career, even after the financial penalties he has suffered since his fall. More to the point, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other cyclists who cheated just as he did, part of cycling's systemic doping culture (which remains, having evolved and morphed into a different guise, but that is a story for another day). Those cyclists were never sanctioned.I very much doubt that they go to bed at night with even a sliver of guilt that they've "cheated themselves". In their world the playing field was level because "everyone did it" and, however depressing or wrong that attitude, it was their reality, and the reality of many sports.Football condones cheating through its inaction against it. He has become the sport's great villain but Luis Suarez was not yet a global household name when his deliberate handball denied Ghana a game-winning goal in the 2010 World Cup here in South Africa. That match went to penalties, which Uruguay won, and Suarez was held aloft by his teammates as a hero for his actions. Diving wins penalties or gets opponents sent off, and both are celebrated if they help win matches and titles - if the end result is achieved, the means are easily justified.When the chess community is shocked at the use of computer programs, it reminds us that integrity and honour do still exist. If that "moral" outrage could be translated into a language spoken by the cheats, and harnessed into law and punishment in other sports, then we might begin to see progress against a growing win-at-all-costs mindset...

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