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(C)heating

by S. Evan Kreider

Some people feel no shame about “(c)heating;” that is, using a computer program to cheat when playing online. They often rationalize it by claiming that everyone else is doing it anyway, and that it helped them avoid tactical blunders which allowed them to play a strategically sophisticated game which is what chess is all about anyway, etc., etc., etc. Here are my (rather strong) opinions on this subject.

First of all, unless you're playing some kind of Kasparovian Advanced chess, in which you and your opponent have agreed to it ahead of time, using a computer for analytic help is cheating, and we all know it, no matter how we try to rationalize it.

As far as wanting to avoid tactical blunders so as to play a more sophisticated game, blunders are part of the game of chess, and learning to avoid them is one of the analytic skills you have to develop as a chess player. It is NOT something you get someone (or something) else to do for you, and then claim that you aren't cheating.

As far as “everyone else is doing it,” that's the sort of excuse I'd expect to hear from a junior-high student who has been caught cheating on his math exam. It's certainly not the sort of thing I expect to hear from an adult.

As far as “I'm just using it to double-check my moves,” even if you decide on the move yourself and don't use the computer to “double-check” until after you've played the move, the analysis can still point out things you might have missed, like a combination, or a forced mate, and in some cases, these might still be available, depending on your opponent’s response. What are you going to do, pretend you didn't see that information? And even without that sort of thing, just having the computer tell you that your move is a good one gives you a psychological advantage that your opponent does not have.

All this brings to mind a passage from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue:

"Consider the example of a highly intelligent seven-year-old child whom I wish to teach to play chess, although the child has no particular desire to learn the game. The child does however have a very strong desire for candy and little chance of obtaining it. I therefore tell the child that if the child will play chess with me once a week I will give the child 50 cents worth of candy; moreover I tell the child that I will always play in such a way that it will be difficult, but not impossible, for the child to win and that, if the child wins, the child will receive an extra 50 cents worth of candy. Thus motivated, the child plays and plays to win. Notice however that, so long as it is the candy alone which provides the child with a good reason for playing chess, the child has no reason not to cheat and every reason to cheat, provided he or she can do so successfully. But, so we may hope, there will come a time when the child will find in those goods specific to chess, in the achievement of a certain highly particular kind of analytical skill, strategic imagination and competitive intensity, a new set of reasons, reasons now not just for winning on a particular occasion, but for trying to excel in whatever way the game of chess demands. Now if the child cheats, he or she will be defeating not me, but himself or herself."

I think this passage reveals a lot about the mind-set of someone who cheats at online or correspondence chess in order to achieve a certain rating or title. The rating or title has become like the candy to the child: it is some external object which the player believes has independent value; and if that were true, it would be rational in some sense for the player to cheat in order to achieve that object.

But this sort of thinking is simply confused. Ratings and titles have no independent value. They are only useful insofar as they are a reflection of our chess playing abilities. They should be used as a way of evaluating one’s level of chess skill, and tracking one’s progress (or lack thereof . . .) over time. So it is not really the rating or title itself that we are aiming at; but rather the improvement of our chess abilities, of which the rating or title is a mere measurement.

So if you cheat in order to secure a higher rating, then you’ll get that higher rating, but you won’t really be playing chess, and you won’t improve, and you won’t achieve what it is that the rating is supposed to reflect. And so in a very real way, you are only cheating yourself, as cliché as that sounds.

[Interested in discussing this issue? Come to Chessville's Discussion Forum!]