Throughout the four different decades (1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s) that I’ve run an Atomic World Championship in, there has been a variety of incidents many well known and some lesser known. There’s been a running joke about how the rules have grown longer and longer over the years, but most of the rules are a response to direct incidents that have occurred in previous editions of the tournament. I’ve been pleased to actually have completed all the tournaments that I’ve run, which hasn’t been the case in some other years that I wasn’t running a tournament in, prior to the Lichess years. There have been many tournaments that failed to complete for a variety of reasons, but a common thread has been disagreements between players, one of whom often was the tournament director themselves.
The first thing I’d like to clarify is that the Atomic Chess World Championship has always been a community event, and has never been an official event run directly by any server (there have been other tournaments run in that way but nobody considers them valid, such as a 7 round swiss format run on FICS once). Lichess is the current home of the AWC and they happily recognize the community crowning a world champion with an unique trophy on their Lichess profile. The TDs have partnered with Lichess over the past several years to align on rules and community standards, along with several other administrative tasks. But I want to take the time to explain a portion of the tournament rules that exists by starting with some background.
In the 1990s, any top player could easily defeat an atomic chess engine. In the 2000s, this became much more difficult with many engine improvements and this trend has only continued over the years. Today, you cannot expect to defeat an engine all of the time, and consider yourself lucky to win some games as white, much less as black. There’s been an explosion in atomic chess opening theory directly attributable to the heavy use of engines. And that theory has been further refined with the introduction of NNUE and expanded endgame tablebases. Syzygy tablebases were created in the late 1990s by Ronald de Man, who also created them for certain chess variants which included atomic chess.
In the early days, it was fairly easy to spot cheaters. There was no automated engine use that was easy for any average player to use. Cheat detection was simply a strong player analyzing a game to spot irregularities and moves that weren’t made by a human. And that’s actually still one of the best ways to detect a cheater. Perfect endgame play in obscure long mating patterns with no time used. Perfect opening theory, especially in openings they’ve never played before. Random moves that don’t make sense to a human.
The tournament rules have a specific paragraph regarding cheating and accusations of cheating. Those rules are rules 6.1 through 6.9 along with 9.2. I want to make a clarification that many people are not aware of or misunderstand. These rules do not cover a player being marked or otherwise sanctioned by the server (Lichess for the past several years). That is covered by rule 3.1.2.3. That means that if Lichess takes action on someone and marks them for a violation of a TOS, they are ejected from the tournament and they have a timeframe for an appeal directly to Lichess about their mark. That mark has nothing to do with the anti-cheat rules or panel. The two things are separate and distinct.
For the 2024 tournament, a cheating accusation was made about jasos12 by someone that was not involved with the anti-cheat panel. It contained several games and explanations, along with some other details. I screened this accusation and found it to be sufficient to forward to the panel. There were three members on the panel to vote. One member abstained from the vote, so I found a replacement member. That replacement member also refused to vote, because both of those members believed that the evidence showed the potential for both results and there was not clear evidence to vote yes or no for both of those members. I then replaced that member as the final member of the anti-cheat panel. The panel voted that the evidence was enough for all the members of the panel to agree that it showed evidence of cheating. Please note that the clarification is that it does not have to be 100% proof, bullet-proof evidence that the player was cheating, just enough to show a method of cheating and that the panel believes that the accusation is correct.
Due to the nature of this case and the ensuing aftermath, I will not be publicizing the names of the people involved other than confirming that I was the final replacement on the anti-cheat panel, the two remaining members on the panel voted yes, and two members that were originally on the panel (or as a replacement) abstained from the vote. I will however try to provide a general explanation and a conclusion that I know won’t make many people happy because they are expecting a bulleted list of direct evidence that is indisputable, which isn’t happening here.
With the advance of heavy engine use and memorization being done – it’s become very hard for people to tell the difference between a strong human and an engine in certain lines above the 2300 level. Especially if you can memorize several sidelines many moves deep, that you’ve used an engine to generate and memorize without any commentary. People can and have cheated in the past by generating massive move trees that they refer to without any understanding of the moves. This isn’t any different from an experienced player wondering why some new player is taking so much time and playing so poorly once they get out or away from their prepared lines. That’s a pretty fine line to walk.
I won’t speak for the other members of the panel, but for me – I would much rather disqualify a player and be wrong in the end, than to allow a player that I have many suspicions about win, and then later find out they were a cheater. That has always been my guiding principle in the tournaments that I’ve run over the years. I have disqualified many people, and in my final tournament, I may have run into a case where someone simply memorized so much of a tree that they might as well be an engine. If that’s where we’re at, I’m glad I won’t be running future editions. This was my final tournament as a TD, and I’m glad to be handing the reins over to HowlinD. I hear there will be some rule changes. Maybe I’m even wrong about this. I wish everybody in the atomic chess community well.
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