A chess grandmaster’s career is in the crapper after officials flushed out a smartphone he hid in a toilet to cheat during an international tournament.
Georgian champ Gaioz Nigalidze was thrown out of the Dubai Open after his opponent, Armenian Grandmaster Tigran Petrosian, suspected that his frequent runs to the john were prompted not by the call of nature, but cries for help from a chess app, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The disgraced grandmaster, whose social-networking account was logged onto the phone, had his moves analyzed by the app. Nigalidze faces a 15-year ban for his wrong move.
“Nigalidze would promptly reply to my moves and then literally run to the toilet,” Petrosian said after Saturday’s match. “I noticed that he would always visit the same toilet partition, which was strange, since two other partitions weren’t occupied.”
Petrosian said he alerted the chief arbiter about his suspicions.
“After my opponent left the very toilet partition yet another time, the arbiters entered it,” he said. “What they found was the mobile phone with headphones. The device was hidden behind the pan and covered with toilet paper.”
Dubai Chess and Culture Club officials took to social media themselves Sunday to announce on their Facebook page that Nigalidze was expelled.
“A cheating incident was found during round 6 by Georgian GM Gaioz Nigalidze … bravo to Chief Arbiter Mahdi Abdul Rahim for taking the complaint seriously and raising it to the Tournament Director,” the posting said. “An electronic device was found in the toilet.”
The club — which said Nigalidze denied owning the device when confronted — also posted a picture of the phone and an official game sheet.
Though cheating is rare at the top echelons of chess, Borislav Ivanov of Bulgaria was suspended in July 2013 for four months by his national federation after it was discovered that most of his moves were the same as those from top computer chess programs.
A couple of years earlier, three French players — including the national team captain — were suspended after they used text messages, a chess computer and codes to beat their opponents in the 2010 Chess Olympiad.
In 2008, at the Dubai Open, a player from Iran was banned after he got help through text messages, Sky News reported.