On the Effect of Cheating in Chess

TL;DR

This paper investigates the performance gains from cheating in chess by using software assistance, focusing on quantifying the advantage gained rather than detection methods.

Contribution

It introduces algorithms to evaluate the performance improvement from limited cheating instances, providing a new perspective on the impact of cheating in chess.

Findings

Cheating can significantly improve a player's performance.

Limited cheating instances can lead to notable game advantages.

The study quantifies the effectiveness of software-assisted cheating.

Abstract

Cheating in chess, by using advice from powerful software, has become a major problem, reaching the highest levels. As opposed to the large majority of previous work, which concerned {\em detection} of cheating, here we try to evaluate the possible gain in performance, obtained by cheating a limited number of times during a game. Algorithms are developed and tested on a commonly used chess engine (i.e software).\footnote{Needless to say, the goal of this work is not to assist cheaters, but to measure the effectiveness of cheating -- which is crucial as part of the effort to contain and detect it.}