How (Not?) To Impress the Opposite Sex

In this long series on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), I was sure I had done a post on cheating. I looked two years back into the series and found nothing. So here we are.

Six months ago, in Cheating for all Ages (March 2023), I put together a summary of previous blog posts about cheating. As happens with many summaries, it soon needed to be updated, but that will have to wait for another time. The most recent post on the subject was Top Yahoos: Niemann, WRTC, and Pragg (August 2023), where the Niemann angle was the latest news in what is without a doubt the most famous scandal with roots in cheating.

Chess.com Reacts To The Craziest Emails From Cheaters (15:18) • '[Published on] Sep 5, 2023'

This particular video is both entertaining and instructive. The description said,

Chess.com's Head of Community Kassa Korley and Chief Chess Officer Danny Rensch sit down to read some of the most hilarious, and crazy requests we've received from cheaters looking to be unbanned.

What particularly struck me was the number of alleged chess cheaters who blamed their fall from grace on a misguided attempt to impress a woman. Really, guys? Do women use the same dubious tactic to impress men? I somehow doubt it.

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Later: Not long after I wrote this post, an article related to the topic appeared: Narratives on Cheating in Online Chess (chessable.com; Alexey Root). It started,

This is a guest post written by Raul Sanchez Garcia. Raul is a lecturer on motor learning and the theory of play at the Sports Science school of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. [...] He is currently conducting a qualitative study on cheating in online chess, which he describes in this post.

The 'guest post' started,

In the wake of the pandemic, online chess has experienced a remarkable surge in popularity, welcoming diverse participants to the game. [...] Amidst this evolution, a pressing concern has arisen -- the pervasive issue of cheating.

The post seeks volunteers to participate in the study, with a mid-December deadline for participation. It ends with eight references to other academic papers relevant to the topic.