FIDE's Anti-Cheating Commission 2017

Continuing with Spectating the 88th FIDE Congress (Antalya, Turkey, October 2017; follow links to download documents), next stop is the ACC. I last looked at the group a year ago in FIDE's Anti-Cheating Commission 2016 (December 2016). The 13 page annex to the minutes of the 2017 Congress included four documents:-

• 4 page report to the Congress
• 6 page 'Proposal for 43rd Chess Olympiad (Batumi 2018)'
• 2 page 'ACC Business Case for FIDE Treasurer'
• 1 page 'ACC Roadmap to Batumi'

The report to the Congress started with a summary of activities...

Annex 83 - Anti-Cheating Commission; ACC Report to the FIDE Congress; September 2016 - October 2017 • This report summarizes ACC activities between the Fide Congress in Baku 2016 and the current Fide Congress in Antalya. In a nutshell, it could be said that the situation has much improved since the recent nomination of the Commission, but the lack of financial and political support has been laming and hindering the effectiveness of the Commission and the development of a better anti-cheating framework. We shall now briefly touch on the major aspects of ACC’s work

...and gave further details grouped into a number of bullets:-

1. Proposals for Anti-Cheating Measures to be adopted during the 43rd Chess Olympiad (Batumi 2018) • 'The main suggestion in the paper regarded the setting up and composition of an Olympic Anti-Cheating Committee (OACC)'

2. The appointment of ACC • 'In March 2017 Fide PB finally nominated the members of the ACC and confirmed its Secretary [Yuri Garrett] for the extant part of the term'

3. Closed cases • 'In April 2017, the Ethics Commission concluded the examination of three cases that had been prosecuted by ACC' [incl. Chavki 2015 'witch-hunting']

4. Ongoing cases • 'In the period under observation, the ACC received only a limited number of inputs, the amount of unofficial reports greatly outnumbering official complaints.'

5. Cooperation with national federations

6. Public accusations of cheating • 'are unfortunately increasing.'

7. Autonomous findings by the ACC • 'FIDE Statutes provide ACC with autonomous investigation powers and the capacity to open a case by itself.'

8. Standard setting and policy making • 'The Anti-Cheating Guidelines appear to be outdated due to incorporation of some of its provisions in the Laws of Chess and to problems associated with its implementation'

9. The functioning of ACC • 'The current level of funding of the Commission is so low that it is heavily hindering its functioning. Commissioners have not been meeting since early 2015'

The six page 'Proposal for 43rd Chess Olympiad (Batumi 2018)' included a one page 'Executive Summary'.

The ACC Business Case was a call for funding online systems; 'Two tools are key in the operations of ACC':-

• 'An online screening tool, whose engine currently exist at Buffalo University, lacking a proper user interface for the FIDE "users" and at risk due to this current implementation.'
• 'An online repository, which basically doesn’t exist yet, and is needed for ACC to operate and archive cases and works, as well as provide a communication tool about Anti-Cheating'

The report to the Congress ended 'with a very respectful but loud cry for financial support'. Does FIDE leadership realize that if FIDE doesn't manage to keep chess engines out of its human competitions, the decline of international, organized chess will surely follow?