They call him “The Chess Detective.”
Regan admits that his model would not work without a computer, known as a chess engine.
Of course, without these same engines, many players would have a hard time cheating in the first place.
“It’s true that I’m fighting fire with fire,” Regan concluded.
This is a familiar phrase in the world of sports. As fraudsters and dopers use new forms of technology in their schemes and seek innovative ways to profit and hide their misdeeds, anti-cheat authorities like Regan are there to catch and stop them. often use the same tools for
In elite distance running, electronic chips in runners’ bibs can detect unusual changes in their pace and, in some cases, whether they are about to cut off the course. In Major League Baseball, officials recently introduced a wireless communications system called PitchCom as a potential antidote to the sign-stealing scandal that led to the Houston Astros winning the World Series in 2017. And in Olympic sports, science is a valuable weapon in the arsenal of dopers and anti-doping authorities trying to stay one step ahead of each other.
“It’s like an arms race,” said Roger Pilke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado. “Endless arms race”
In his 2016 book titled The Edge: Combating Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports, Pirque writes that we collectively need to “shape the conversation about technology in sports.” It’s too late to start,” he wrote. He said technology is being used not only to cheat and catch cheaters, but perhaps more importantly, to establish rules about what cheating is in the first place. claims.
Are carbon-plated running shoes and high-tech swimsuits giving athletes an unfair advantage? MMA fighters shave facial bones to reduce the chance of getting cuts and bleeding when punched What about that?
Perhaps most importantly, what new forms of fraud will we see next?
Checkmate with “Toilet Gate”
Regan earned his reputation as a chess detective not by catching accused fraudsters, but rather by helping to exonerate them.
At the 2006 World Chess Championship, Bulgarian player Veselin Topalov indirectly accused his opponent Vladimir Kramnik of accessing his chess engine while he was in the toilet. Topalov’s team noted in a news release that many of the Russian grandmaster’s movements matched the computer’s suggestions, while calling attention to how often Kramnik uses the bathroom during matches.
This story became known as “Toiletgate.”
Kramnik denied the allegations and ultimately won the match. Meanwhile, Regan, who was an excellent chess player in his youth, decides to use his own model to analyze the data. He realized that in many situations in Kramnik’s game, he only really has one strong move to choose from.
“If the best moves are singular, strong players are more likely to find the same move as the computer,” Regan explained.
Although it may not be considered a sport in the traditional sense, chess has had its fair share of cheating scandals, almost all of which involve the support of chess engines. Perhaps the most infamous incident of all time happened just last year.
After suffering a shocking defeat in a top-level tournament in St. Louis, five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen refused to play American grandmaster Hans Niemann and later publicly admitted He accused her of wrongdoing, even more so than before, and more recently. Niemann admitted to cheating in online games as a teenager, but denied cheating in in-person tournaments. He later sued the Norwegian and others for defamation. The lawsuit was dismissed in June.
In the past decade alone, at least four elite players have been caught probing chess engines on cellphones hidden in toilets during tournaments.
In several other cases, players such as Borislav Ivanov have been accused of receiving transfer advice via radio equipment. In Ivanov’s case, there were suspicions that a buzzer had been placed inside his shoe. (Regan’s model determined that the odds of him playing the trick he played without computer aid in the 2012 tournament were “approximately 1 in a million.”) Ivanov has denied wrongdoing, but , was disqualified from another tournament for refusing to take off his shoes.)
According to another player who told chess website ChessBase that he witnessed the incident, he told the tournament director: “I will definitely not take off my shoes.” “My socks stink.”
“It’s just a game of cat and mouse.”
Regan estimates that five to 10 cases of cheating occur annually in advanced-level amateur and professional chess tournaments. Unfortunately, he says this is nothing new. When he was a kid, scammers secretly studied chess books instead of computers. Only the technology has changed.
Over the past century, the devices and techniques at the heart of cheating in other sports have ranged from the incredibly simple to the highly technical and sophisticated.
For example, at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, it was the car that Fred Lorz used to comfortably run 11 of the race’s 42.2 miles and win the marathon.
In more recent history, the Houston Astros used a center field camera to zoom in on opposing catchers’ signs, allowing batters to know in advance what pitches they were about to face.
In between was the electric modified fencing epee used by pentathlete Boris Onishchenko at the 1976 Olympics. A capsule of fake blood that Tom Williams popped into his mouth to feign an injury during a crucial moment in a rugby match. A small electric motor hidden inside the seat tube of a bicycle. The powder you sprinkle on your boxer’s gloves hardens when wet, turning your sweaty fists into anvils. and a long list of technological advancements dopers use to avoid detection. From microdosing to more comical endeavors, like a cyclist who tried to pass a drug test by pouring someone else’s urine from a condom under his armpit into a tube on his sleeve. . (The cyclist, Michel Polantier, was quickly captured.)
“It’s really a cat-and-mouse game,” said Matt Fedoruk, chief scientific officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. “We constantly strive to develop and refine our technology to stay one step ahead of dopers through sound, evidence-based scientific research.”
Science has probably played a more important role in the world of doping than in any other area of cheating in sport. Fedoruk pointed to his use and detection of erythropoietin, commonly known as EPO, as just one example.
EPO, a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells in the body, has been banned in sports since the early 1990s, according to the World Anti-Doping Agency. But before the 2000 Sydney Olympics, anti-doping authorities had no tests that could detect doping. Several prominent cyclists, including Lance Armstrong, eventually tested positive for the substance over the next dozen years.
But as more athletes became infected with EPO, new synthetic versions of the hormone began to emerge. Fedoruk said third and fourth generations of his EPO molecules are now emerging, but they have a different structure than their predecessors and therefore require different types of testing.
“As medicines evolve, tests need to evolve as well,” he says. “Because it’s not a one-test-fits-all type of approach.”
Perhaps this is why a survey conducted by USADA in 2022 found that of nearly 1,000 U.S. athletes questioned, 53% said the science used to detect performance-enhancing substances outweighed athletes’ ability to avoid a positive test. That’s probably why you said you believe you’re behind, or far behind.
“If you’re going to cheat with doping, you always have the upper hand,” Pirquet added.
“It’s a double-edged sword, right? You come up with a better detection method, but the person who has that knowledge also holds the key to knowing how to become a better doper.”
What’s next?
Some advances in sports technology simply raise questions about cheating rather than indict it.
In 2008, several swimming world records were set in quick succession after Speedo introduced its new LZR swimsuit, designed to reduce drag as swimmers move through the water. The suit was later banned by World Aquatics, the international federation that oversees the sport. A similar controversy erupted in the athletics world in 2017 after the release of Nike’s Vaporfly shoe, the first of what is now colloquially known as a “supershoe.”
The future of sports cheating could be filled with more incidents like this, with athletes discovering and reaping the benefits of supercharged equipment before governing bodies can take action. But experts like Fedoruk and Pielke think the next big frontier is gene doping, or broader human enhancement.
“The problem of doping will now seem strange compared to the ability to enhance human performance,” Pielke predicted.
It is already common for athletes to repair or replace parts of their bodies to improve performance. All the baseball players who have had LASIK eye surgery in hopes of picking up curveballs more easily, or MMA fighters like Nick Diaz who have turned to plastic surgery to keep them from bleeding when they get hit. Think about it.
But gene doping goes a step further. The idea is that athletes could hypothetically modify their genes to produce more hormones that help them compete, or less hormones that hinder them.
Fedoruk said no one has been caught attempting this type of gene doping, but “it is a threat.” For example, the synthetic type of her EPO can be found in a test, but the EPO produced by an engineered gene cannot.
“Here’s the idea: Could this be undetectable?” he asked.
It seems only a matter of time before athletes, or their accomplices, are able to take advantage of new scientific advances to turn the idea of gene doping into reality. In the meantime, Fedoruk and his colleagues will continue to use their own scientific tools to fight it off. As elsewhere in sports, the proverbial cat-and-mouse game ensues.
“Really, science and technology are both the problem and the solution,” Pielke said.
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @Tom_Schad.