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Chess has been around for over 1400 years, and it has been so popular that we probably expect that everyone who is reading this article has played chess. Chess is more than a game now; chess is history, politics, and even technology. It might be hard to realize this, but technological advancements have been used to cheat in chess just like in any other game. One of the best chess engines, Stockfish, has a chess rating of around 3540; the best chess player in the world, on the other hand, has a rating of only 2882. Stockfish is able to evaluate up to 130 million positions per second and choose the best possible option. This means that any person who knows how to play chess can beat the best player in the world if they know how to use the program.
Obviously, cheating is not allowed in any formal games, such as tournaments, Olympiads, championships. Of course, some people do it anyway, but how do they manage to not get noticed? If you are playing on a website such as chess.com, cheating can be as simple as opening another tab on your browser and replicating your game with a chess bot. However, chess players are very attentive and will probably notice a lot of consecutive highly-intelligent moves. On the other hand, if two grandmasters are playing against each other and one of them uses a chess engine for 1-2 moves, the cheating will be nearly undetectable.
Cheating without getting noticed is hard when it comes to playing in real life; after all, everyone will notice if you take your phone out or talk to someone. So how did cheaters get around? One of the most famous cheating scandals occurred in 2010, when Sebastian Feller allegedly cheated in a Russian Olympiad using computer software. Members of his team sat at specific tables in specific order so that Mr. Feller could decode their positions into a chess move. That kind of clever thinking was a surprise in and of itself, but an even greater surprise was the fact that the cheating was ultimately found.
Feller Sebastien against Efimenko Zahar, game from 2010. Source: chessbase.com
Another smart technology, Sockfish, was used by James Stanley in a game against his unsuspecting friend. He made a small system that would receive information from him by his foot taps and send back an answer using vibrations.
As you can see, modern technologies have reached even the most ancient of games, and now chess can be played by very different rules. While using engines for chess is not allowed in formal tournaments, you can still have fun playing against a chess bot yourself!
Here was my attempt at defeating Stockfish:
As you can see, I didn't even get close to defeating the engine, and I was playing as white!
Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes: https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html
More in-depth dive into biggest chess engine stockfish: https://towardsdatascience.com/dissecting-stockfish-part-1-in-depth-look-at-a-chess-engine-7fddd1d83579
See for yourself how chess engines play! https://tcec-chess.com/#div=sf&game=1&season=20
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