Here is an interview of the hero (source: http://pressadaily.bg/publication/9128-%D0%96%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%82-%D0%BC%D0%...
- January 25, 2013): - Google translated

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Life between chess and chalga
Miracle of Blagoevgrad considers the other players for dummies

"Chess is my passion. Daily practice three to four hours before the board. I have no girlfriend. night-time walk in the discotheques, I like to listen to folk music "so succinctly describes his life 25-year-old Borislav Ivanov from Blagoevgrad. Freshman (first-grade student) at SWU "Neophyte Rilski" a month ago shocked the world chess public, caused a furor in the tournament in Zadar, Croatia. There was amateur chess grandmasters leader and found him suspected of fraud and manipulation.

"The problem is that no one expected to win. I imagined brilliant because I have good training, this is the answer. GMs refused to accept that I am good and therefore started with suspicions. Checked me like I'm the biggest terrorist.

I do not know what more I was searched, but found nothing with which to refute my best game. Stripped my jacket, shirt. I do not know, you would expect to find a bomb strapped to me. I just went to the tournament and won. This is "smiles confidently Bobby.

Chess player quietly taking interest in it and not worry about the brouhaha over his performance in Zadar. Argues that looking at things from a fun side and does not intend to give up their favorite sport. Read with interest the comments on the forums, do not stop looking for the truth or a computer genius swindler's "It's funny to me is seems that almost snorted coke or have a microchip implanted in the tooth," says Ivanov. 
He is currently preparing for participation a tournament in Plovdiv in early February. Believes that there will do well. "I get a lot of threats to my upcoming participation, including that I would be beaten. But my issue is that I have the support of my friends and the boss of the Bulgarian Chess Federation Nikolay Velchev. Others do not care, "he said.

Bob is convinced that it is a threat to GMs. So went the scandal around him in Zadar. After the tournament in Croatia even other Bulgarian actors stopped to talk to him and were convinced that he had done some manipulation game. For a freshman at the University of Blagoevgrad, however brilliant his performance there makes perfect sense. For five years, the main thing he was doing was playing chess. The young man lived alone in the family apartment with his mother and his sister for years in England

"I'm doing all alone. In the summer I go to work in the restaurants of the sea, and even chess well enough to earn international standards, so I have no problems, "says chess player.

The student believes that GMs charge it a scam because they can not take damage from a youngster. "Most players are absolute assholes. For many people chess is antisocial game. Therefore, chess players are generally older single men, single and unhappy people. But there are a lot of cool. Constantly try to escape from this stereotype. To be honest, sometimes I'm ashamed to say I'm a chess player "fails to hide his rebellion to the status quo Ivanov. Adds that a normal young man who loves fun and he thinks that chess and chalga not mutually exclusive.

"Most GMs are selfish and therefore unable to take my performance in Zadar" says the Blagoevgrad man. This makes him even more motivated to win and believes that the tournament in Plovdiv will show a brilliant game.

To speculation that it's a brilliant computer programmer who helped to make manipulations during tournaments, Borislav emphasizes that teaching pedagogy at the university. Recognizes that wrote this specialty simply because there accepted it, but feel better as the course he is the only  man among 30 girls.

Plans to record minor economy. Otherwise, avoid making long-term plans. "I have no idea what will work after ten years. I do not even know what I would do in ten months. Certainly would stay in Blagoevgrad, because I think this is the best city in the world, "says the young chess player.

Borislav Ivanov: I was a fan of Cheparinov but 
I will soon surpass him.

- What do you say to those who doubt you?

- If you think that this may affect my game and my psychological impact is lying. 
I enter each game fully confident. I'm made from iron and I do not care. I curled up in front of people, and very relaxing. Before the board, however, forget the whole world. Even bombs to drop, I do not care.

- So you have nerves.

- The strongest quality of a chess player is not influenced in any way by the external environment. The most important thing in chess is a mind. I definitely have it, my innate's I've seen many people who are 50 years old, but played as children. Sit on the board and tremble. They just do not have in your life nothing else. I think there are a lot of good things. For me it's just a game, which is fun.

-Your favorite chess player?

- I'm a fan of Topalov, but lately more and more disappointed by chess players in general. Cheparinov liked, he is currently the second strongest after Veselin Topalov, but surely he'll be surpassed any time soon. Now he will play in Plovdiv and was told that if you play me, I'll offer a draw because he is absolutely sure that it will play on a computer. So for me, these people are paranoid.

- Because of the scandal in Zadar expect you to get to the withdrawal of racing your rights?

- No, on what basis? Can they stop the human player that plays very hard and scored a lot of goals? These people their only argument is my strong game. When this argument did not hold, they switched to ugly lies. First started with computer moves, then figured that I was to be charged with fraud tournaments in Bulgaria and Serbia. I just went to a tournament in Serbia and played a thin, basically. And no one in our time with anything not blame me as a chess player.

(C Press, printed edition, number 375 of January 25, 2013)

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Let me say that I won't be involved in discussing this interview! 
I didn't want to post it here at all, but I decided that you deserve the whole truth revealed about this very special case.

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 05/09/13 at 03:51:28:


If he is cheating it seems more important to figure out exactly how, than start treating OTB chess like it was blitz on a server.

For one thing, most of the really strong players have extremely good memories and prepare novelties with their computers; some may even be capable of memorising certain endings from the tablebases... The more theoretical the game becomes, the harder it will be to separate cheaters from memorisers. 

A statistical rule will require a certain amount of games, i.e time - and then suddenly we're in the same spot like for example cycling, banning a player years after his performance and not for something concrete like substances found in the bloodstream, but "your performance was x% closer to an engine than the others, so you were probably cheating."

And even worse, that "cure" wouldn't stop speculations and accusations - sore losers would no doubt start checking their opponents and cry foul play increasingly often, since "no human could see that mate in 26ply", "or find that king manoeuvre" or "he obviously only cheated against me, so statistics say nothing" etc etc...  

In short, tournament play could become too stressful for reasonable people to bother.

So, if there really is no way to concretely see that a player sitting in front of you is cheating, except from comparing his moves with an engine, then the only reasonable solution would be to allow all players to bring their laptops, i.e. it would be OTB Corr, but at least on level terms and without accusations.

Probably he's cheating, my opinion. But we can say nothing more definite until we have some sort of formal, objective proceeding with due process, the ability to confront one's accusers, and the like. 

I cannot understand the lust for certainty when certainty is not there. For the time being we must tolerate ambiguity, notwithstanding that the case against Ivanov appears quite strong.

I say again that all these comparisons with an engine will not be formally acceptable until they are cast into statistical form. It is simply false that a player might not innocently play any number of moves matching the recommendations of a computer. It is only unlikely. Before we shun someone or formally cast him out of chess, someone should estimate how unlikely.

This thread has gone on a long, LONG time.  I'd just like to ask everyone to, when considering whether Ivanov cheated or not, compare the moves of his games with those of Houdini.  When I did that and posted about it earlier in the thread, I found that in one game (a rather boring, strategic endgame with no tactics going on whatsoever), he played Houdini's first choice something like 40 moves in a row (I don't remember the exact number).  Forty moves!!  

His results are almost inconsequential; the fact that he is not playing his own moves, that he is plagiarizing them is the whole point.  When he played well, he played Houdini's moves.  Not very very strong moves, not Rybka's moves, not Fritz's, but Houdini's moves.  Perhaps he's changed the engine that he uses now--I don't know.

And regarding Taljechin's question: I'm an electronics engineer at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the most prestigious astronomical observatory in the world.  I design and program embedded systems, mostly--motion controllers, signal processing; essentially I design computers with a specific purpose.  So I know a little about how a computer "thinks," and there is absolutely no way to replicate it with a human brain.  None whatsoever.  In the old days, before we had computers, it took teams of scientists months and months, with charts tracking which computations had been done, etc., to accomplish what a simple smart phone processor can do in seconds.  I don't mean to sound condescending, but I'm somewhat of an expert in electronics, and there is absolutely no possible way for a human brain to replicate what a computer does without tons of time and an elaborate filing system to keep track of everything.  It's simply not possible.

That doesn't mean that humans can't play extremely good moves, but the way in which a human comes up with which move is good is much, MUCH different than the way a machine does.  Any discussion about someone having grown up learning the game from computers, therefore he "thinks" like a computer, is absolutely laughable.  Memorizing computer opening preparation?  Of course that's entirely possible.  Replicating an engine's choice for 40 moves when the difference between the top 5 choices is all miniscule (plus or minus two tenths of a pawn)--not a chance. 

Vass wrote on 05/08/13 at 12:17:27:

I watched the video. I have to say that the organizers were clever this time. If not enough real games played then no price. As in 3 rounds players refused to play Borislav Ivanov, he simply didn't achieve the minimum number of real played games. 

I doubt the fiderules permit to refuse playing against a player but if I would be paired against him then he would get my default point too even if fide would threaten me with sanctions. 

If you feel that breaking the rules is the correct thing to do then I believe you should do but of course you should also be willing to accept the consequences of your actions.

In this country, someone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. There is a strong sense, at least among decent people, that no one should be called a criminal before he has been convicted.  I realize that this is not a criminal matter, but all the same, it is not really within the pale to say that this person is cheating.  

Notwithstanding that, I think it's O.K. to entertain the hypothesis that he is cheating and marshal arguments in support of that hypothesis.  In that spirit, I think the chances are extremely high that Ivanov is indeed cheating.  If that is true, then he effectively thumbs his nose at the chess community and makes a mockery of a great game.  I find that quite aggravating.

It is also quite O.K. to argue the contrary case.

I have elsewhere expressed my doubts about "proofs" that someone is cheating based upon the agreement of his moves with those selected by a machine.  My complaint has been that no one (so far as I know) has produced a statistical model by which this fundamentally stochastic problem can be addressed.  I would require such a model, and a very high degree of statistical confidence associated with its conclusion in the given case, before I would allow circumstantial evidence of this kind to be introduced in a formal proceeding.  Even so, I think that when you see game after game of strong, machine-like play, and most damningly, when you see moves played which are approved of by machines but which would only rarely be selected by a strong player, you don't really need a statistical model to form a fairly reliable, informal conclusion.   

Concerning the variance of Ivanov's tournament results, it is false that it is "simply not possible" other than by cheating in some events and not others.  It would be more correct to say that, based upon common experience, it is quite unlikely.  How unlikely?  To answer that, you need a statistical model.

Well, Ivanchuk is famous for mixing very convincing tournament appearances with other much less convincing, that doesn't mean he's cheating - rather the opposite...


The thought struck me that instead of presupposing that someone is cheating without any proof of how that is done, one could ask oneself: if the aim is to produce moves that are likely to be played by an engine - how would you accomplish that?

One answer could be that he has worked hard on internalising the search algorithm of for example the Ivanhoe engine. Instead of "Think Like a Grandmaster", which is hard to do as it's mostly intuitive and different GMs think differently - why not try to think like an engine? If the algorithm is available and you understand it, then the instructions may be much easier to follow... 

Anyone here with programming experience, who knows if that idea is possible? What does the search algorithm look like and can it be simplified for a slow human brain?

MartinC wrote on 05/08/13 at 13:10:39:


If you refer to my post: I don't understand what you are saying. The variance in results is simply not possible - That Zadar open result was arounf 2600 level, then a 2000 result, then 2400, where he maybe cheated in just some games.
A variance between 2400 and 2600 I understand, but 2600 and 2000 over 9 games is simply not possible.