Cheating at the German Championships
: Created:05 Jun 2011 , byIn Ealing's 2011 club magazine, Chess Knight, Alastair Johnstone wrote a superb article on a French cheating scandal involving Sebastian Feller. The wrong-doing was denied but in the recent German Championships deceit by Christoph Natsides has been admitted.
I am indebted to Chessbase for this report.
"Before the final round Natsidis had won two games (against Christoph Zill and Hans-Joachim Vatter) and drawn six (against Daniel Fridman, Alexsandar Dranov, Christian Seel, Raj Tischbierek, Oswald Gschnitzer and Igor Khenkin). If he lost the final round against GM Sebastian Siebrecht he would still have scored an IM norm.
During the fatal game Natsidis kept disappearing from the board, even when it was his move, for up to ten minutes. His opponent Siebrecht complained to the arbiter, and the two followed him to the toilet, where he had locked himself in a stall. Siebrecht, who had a very tricky position, decided to offer Natsidis a draw, which his opponent accepted. After this he was searched by the arbiter, who found a smart phone in his pocket. It had a chess program installed and the program was displaying the position five minutes before the end of the game against Siebrecht.
Natsidis went to Siebrecht, admitted that he had been using his cell phone to cheat and apologised to his opponent. The incident will have serious consequences, which will be decided in the coming weeks."