Head Games
British master and wit William Hartston in his seminal work 'How to Cheat at Chess', when he wrote in the days before sophisticated hand-held computers: “If God had not meant us to analyse on our pocket set in the toilet he would not have given us toilet paper on which to make notes.”— ICC Newsletter
Toilet breaks trigger chess row
But Mr Topalov has raised questions about the amount of time his opponent is spending in the toilet.Mr Topalov was outraged by Mr Kramnik's "suspicious behaviour", his aide said.
His manager, Silvio Danilov, had asked to see videotapes of Mr Kramnik in his designated relaxation area, in which the toilet is the only unmonitored area.
"During every game, he visited the relaxation room 25 times at the average and the bathroom more than 50 times," he said.
Mr Kramnik "takes his most significant decisions in a toilet", he said, apparently suggesting that the player was somehow cheating.
High level chess can be extremely stressful. Does Kramnik have irritable bowel syndrome, a weak bladder, or do his frequent trips to the toilet portend something more sinister. I've directed a number of chess tournaments and can attest to the fact that the bathroom is a popular destination for the cheaters. I've heard players discussing their games there. I even remember one tournament, I think it was in Philadelphia, where the directors discovered a player adjusting an electronic device he was using to cheat inside a restroom stall. Kramnik is averaging a visit to the bathroom approximately every 7 minutes. Is he just pondering his moves while seated on the throne. Chess is after all The Game of Kings. (tip to Daily Rev ).
Comments
How does going to the head enable cheating?
You could refer to notes hidden there. You might even keep a small chess computer there to check your tactics. Something like this would be useful. Just a Palm device It may even run on the Palm Treo phones. This is not useful for a GM for strategic decisions, but calculating tactics and avoiding blunders it could be helpful.
"how does going to the head enable cheating?"
did u read the article
What you do is you set up the match at a little joint in little Italy. You have a guy go ahead of you and tape a small chess computer behind the toilet in the bathroom there. After you've been playing for a while, you say, 'I've got to go to the john'. You go in there and get the chess computer and use it to kill him. It's not personal at all, it's just business.
Thanks for the link, Norm, and the cool analysis. I remember when I was a kid studying the game, I read a book by a fellow named Al Horowitz (I think that was his name), and he told some hilarious stories about tricks and jokes played during tournament competition. I seem to remember one involving the American team stealing the t.p. out of the Russian team's b.r.
it wouldn't be too hard to had access to the most powerful computers in the world, right from your toilet. Having a simple web-enabled Pocket PC would allow you to execute analysis on another machine remotely. My Pocket PC is not powerful enough to run Quickbooks for example, but I can access it on my desktop using Windows Remote Services on my Pocket PC while travelling. Anything that can use web-services could be setup to remote control a more powerful machine.
It was not just about going to the toilet. Look here for a very good account on the recent problems in the Kramnik - Topalov match:
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3382
I thought it was that he was going to the relaxation area because he was known to pace a lot during games, and that the area was smaller than he was used to, so he included the bathroom as well?
I seriously do not know what to make of this. I mean, he's a damn grandmaster. Unless he's been cheating for years and never been caught, it's almost surely all skill to him. Also, I thought it was cliched thinking that chess "superstars" were all whiners that demanded things exactly right that just solidified their "nerd" image. Not saying it's true, but it certainly has happened with other events.
But, that is a lot of the time to be going to the bathroom and rest area, and I don't know if I wholly buy his pacing story.
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