When people in positions of authority cheat

Recently, cheating in chess has hit the headlines, to the point that even non-aficionados would have heard something about it.

Magnus Carlsen, the current reigning World Champion, lost a game playing white in a tournament to 19-year-old Hans Niemann, ranked approximately 40th in the world. The loss rocked the 31-year-old Carlsen, to the point that he pulled out of the tournament.

To be fair, losses to lower ranked opponents are uncommon but not rare. A calculation based on their Elo ratings at the time estimates that Niemann would have won about 6% of the time. (The Elo chess rating system was created by Hungarian-American physics professor Arpad Elo.)

But Carlsen would later comment that it was Niemann’s manner of play that befuddled him: “I had the impression that he wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way that I think only a handful of players can do.”

He added bluntly, “I believe that Niemann has cheated”.

Surprisingly, Niemann himself admitted that he had cheated in chess twice before, albeit a few years ago, as a 12-year old and 16-year-old. However, he has been adamant that he has never cheated in over-the-board games, ie, games played physically in person.

This sparked a debate in the chess community. There are two balancing forces at stake. One is the integrity of the sport and what it means to win a chess tournament, especially in over-the-board competitions. The other is a recognition that since computers became better than humans at this game, it has become the norm for players to use them as part of their training and analysis, and that we are only a hidden phone or a conspiratorial audience member away from chaos.

Then venerable chess website chess.com published a shocking report, revealing analysts had caught Niemann cheating several times – and while the teen had admitted to those instances, their analysis has led them to believe that “Hans has likely cheated in more than 100 online chess games, including several prize money events”.

The truth is, most people don’t choose to cheat or steal on a large scale straight away. Dan Ariely, a leading American behavioural economist, stated in an interview that his research showed that such duplicitous behaviour is “very common”.

Out of approximately 50,000 people that were involved in his experiments, he estimated that around 30,000 of them – more than half – cheated. But of those that cheated, only about a dozen were “big cheaters” who he estimated “stole” about US$150 (they were relatively cheap experiments where you would lose a few dollars more on average if participants cheated). However, there were about 18,000 who stole a total of US$36,000.

Most people cheat, but they only cheat a little. It’s like their conscience only allows them to do things that they can justify.

The problem is that these small cheats can eventually grow. Ariely calls it the “what the hell” effect. When you begin to cheat, you only do it a little bit at first in an attempt to convince yourself that, on the whole, you’re still a good person. However, if you realise that what you’re doing is actually something bad, then "what the hell", and you just go all in.

It’s even easier to blur the lines when you see others being dishonest – especially those in positions of power. When partnered with somebody and given an opportunity to cheat, then people would not only be more likely to cheat, but to also cheat to a larger degree. And if you are in an organisation where not only is cheating tolerated but actually actively important for your and the company’s wellbeing, then it almost makes it impossible not to be a participant in cheating.

When American energy commodities company Enron declared bankruptcy in 2001 after reporting US$100bil in mostly fake revenue the year before, the assumption was that it was just the key decision-makers at the top who cheated and lied. However, it was later found that hundreds of people in the company were active participants n the fraud.

So cheating is easy when you think you are only cheating a little, it's easier if you see that others around you are cheating, and it's also easier when you can convince yourself that it’s in the interest of some greater good. You see this manifested in many different scenarios, from cycling teams to political parties.

The fact that chess players cheat online is more or less an open secret, with discussions about how to detect this found on chess.com forums from as far back as 2008 (the website began in 2005). For whatever reason, this has been tolerated, with even chess.com only quietly warning those suspected of cheating but allowing them to continue to play.

Until now, of course. Niemann was due to take part in the Chess.com Global Championship, a hybrid online and over-the-board tournament with a first prize of US$200,000 (RM938,300) but he has now been disqualified.

To be honest, I’m not sure how Niemann can play in any tournament in the short term without having the spotlight shone on him. If he does well, it’s because he cheated. If he doesn’t, it’s because he didn’t.

One way that things might return to “normal” for him is if we discover that many other players are also cheating. Then Niemann would just be the first of many, and either it will be accepted as a deplorable normal or the group will all be ostracised and banned (or severely policed) and maybe even forced to create a breakaway federation.

We actually know there are others. Chess.com highlighted that its list of suspected cheaters includes four of the top 100 chess players in the world. Earlier this week, Joachim Birger Nilsen resigned as president of the Norwegian Chess Federation after admitting to cheating in an online game in 2016-2017. Nilsen was part of the Norway Gnomes team, and it came second in the tournament to win US$10,000 (RM46,915). You know who else was on that team then? World No.1 Magnus Carlsen.

Can we ever trust anybody playing chess from now on? Perhaps the only thing that FIDE (French acronym for the world chess federation) can really do is to be strict. There needs to be high standards to assess guilt, and stiff punishment that can’t be easily evaded.

It should, I argue, be similar to what we do with laws in the country. Somebody can be found guilty, and they will have many avenues to appeal. But once all that is exhausted, however long it takes, and they are found guilty, then they should serve their punishment. For if exceptions are given, then it sets a precedent which breaks the trust of all those involved, both the players in the game and those on the outside who have a vested interest in how things turn out.

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In his fortnightly column, Contradictheory, mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi explores the theory that logic is the antithesis of emotion but people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at [e-mail]. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.