The Game of Drama: Controversies in Chess Quiz

Answer: Lipstick

The Anna Rudolf controversy, known as the "lipstick scandal," occurred at the 2007 Vandoeuvre Open in France when she was 20 years old. After winning her first four rounds against strong opponents including a grandmaster, three Latvian players accused her of cheating by hiding a microchip in her lip balm to receive computer moves.

The arbiter confiscated her belongings, banned her from using lip balm, and restricted her movements during her final game, leaving her in tears. The tournament president publicly declared Rudolf was a victim and the accusations were designed to distract her, receiving applause from spectators. Following her performance with an ELO of 2541 in the aforementioned tournament, Anna earned the final norm she needed to be awarded a Woman's Grandmaster (WGM) title.

The bizarre allegations were completely false, and Rudolf later passed a polygraph test for Chess.com in 2024 confirming she never cheated. An unfortunate example of a stain on the chess community that poor Anna had to endure these slanderous accusations for many ongoing years.

Answer: True

The New York Times quickly seized on this controversy, publishing an article titled "Bathroom Dispute Halts World Chess Championship". During the 2006 World Championship match in Elista, Russia, between grandmasters (GMs) Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov, Topalov's manager accused Kramnik of cheating by making excessive bathroom trips (allegedly around 50 per game) to consult a chess engine, as the bathroom was the only area without video surveillance. After Kramnik took a 3-1 lead, organizers mandated a shared toilet for both players, which Kramnik refused as an infringement on his rights, leading him to forfeit Game 5 and changing the score to 3-2.

The controversy escalated with accusations that Kramnik's moves matched computer recommendations 78% of the time, and later photos purporting to show cables in the bathroom ceiling. The match eventually continued under the original arrangements, ending 6-6 in classical games, with Kramnik winning the rapid tiebreak 2.5-1.5 to become undisputed World Champion.

In 2007, FIDE's Ethics Commission issued Topalov a "severe reprimand" for making defamatory statements, and in 2024, Kramnik passed a polygraph test confirming he never cheated. The two players remained bitter rivals for years, refusing to shake hands or speak to each other.

Amazingly, this is not the only bathroom blunder to have surfaced in the world of competitive chess. During the Spanish Team Championship in 2024, Ukrainian GM Kirill Schevchenko's phone was found in a toilet stall with a handwritten note reading "Don't touch! This telephone has been left so the owner can answer it at night!" The handwriting matched Shevchenko's scoresheets. Arbiters observed him entering the bathroom, seeing the locked stall, and waiting rather than using available facilities. For this act, Shevchenko's GM title was stripped away and he was subsequently banned from all FIDE (the governing body for tournament level chess) events until October 2026.

Answer: Magnus Carlsen

Perhaps one of the biggest controversies in modern contemporary chess was of the cheating accusation brought by famed Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen against opponent Hans Niemann.

In September 2022, Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the prestigious Sinquefield Cup after losing to 19-year-old Hans Niemann, ending his 53-game winning streak, and followed by posted a cryptic video implying cheating without providing specifics. Carlsen later stated he believed Niemann had "cheated more-and more recently-than he has publicly admitted," noting that Niemann seemed unusually relaxed while outplaying him in critical positions. Niemann admitted to cheating in online games at ages 12 and 16 but vehemently denied ever cheating in over-the-board tournaments, even offering to play naked to prove his innocence.

The controversy spawned a viral internet theory, originating as a joke in a Twitch chat that Niemann used vibrating anal beads to receive computer moves! Though neither Carlsen nor any serious investigator ever made this specific accusation, the internet had made this claim viral with Elon Musk contributing by retweeting the anal bead theory.

Niemann filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit against Carlsen, Chess.com and others, which was settled in August 2023 with Chess.com stating they found no evidence of cheating in in-person games. The scandal became one of the biggest in modern chess history, blending serious questions about cheating detection with absurd internet memes that overshadowed the actual controversy. Come on anal beads... a truly bizarre allegation indeed!

Answer: Yogurt

Referred to as the 'Yogurt Code' controversy, this incident took place in 1978 at the World Chess Championship between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi. Controversy unfolded when a waiter delivered a blueberry yogurt to Karpov during game 2 without Karpov having requested it. Korchnoi's team filed a formal protest claiming the timing and color of yogurt deliveries could be a coded signaling system, suggesting that different flavors at specific moves could communicate instructions like "offer a draw" or "decline a draw." To resolve the dispute, arbiters ruled that only violet-colored yogurt could be served to Karpov at a designated time by a specific waiter, with all other colors and foods banned.

Korchnoi's second (a person appointed by each contender to aid in match preparations) later proposed that the concern with the yogurt delivery is that it potentially may have contained stimulants which would have conferred a performance enhancing advantage for Karpov. Nonetheless, this theory never could be proven.

Anatoly Karpov won the match 6-5 with 21 draws, retaining his World Championship title.
The match was incredibly dramatic, Karpov had a commanding 5-2 lead after 27 games, needing just one more win to clinch the title. However, Korchnoi fought back heroically, scoring three wins and one draw in the next four games to equalize the match at 5-5 after 31 games. But in the decisive 32nd game, Karpov won with the white pieces to secure the championship

Answer: True

Sometimes the highest echelons of chess have some comedic elements that exhibit how much of a circus show these matches can be. 1978 was no different between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi.

Karpov representing the former Soviet Union was pitted against Korchnoi who happened to have defected from the Soviet Union in 1976 following pressure by influential Soviet GM Tigran Petrosian a strong proponent of the younger, rising Soviet star Karpov who felt he was better primed to challenge Bobby Fisher for the World Chess Championship compared to Korchnoi who was viewed as not a strong enough contender to take on Fisher.

During the 1975 Candidates Match to see who would win the opportunity to take on Fisher, it came down to a final match between Karpov and Korchnoi, the latter who in the leadup to this high-stakes match had virtually fewer support and had a difficult time finding a grandmaster to help prepare for Karpov. Following a 12.5-11.5 defeat to Karpov, Korchnoi saw the writing on the wall and made the decision to defect which branded him a hostile traitor to the Soviet regime at the time due to this action.

This raised the stakes to an already expected tense atmosphere for when the 1978 championship would commence. The KGB aiding Karpov pulled out all the stops to ensure Korchnoi's defeat. A team of 18 foreign operations intelligence officers including the hypnotist Vladimir Zukhar were dispatched to aid Karpov and deter Korchnoi's efforts. Zukhor's sole task in essence resorted to parapsychology or mind games to get in Korchnoi's head and disrupt his cognitive flow with the New York Times reporting Zukhar's "only job seemed to be to sit up front and stare at Korchnoi with his bulging, scary eyes".

Korchnoi claimed that Dr. Vladimir Zukhar was more than a distraction; he was trying to hypnotize or disrupt his brain waves. Korchnoi wrote: "The audience could see the connection between Zukhar and Karpov. At the beginning, Zukhar was sitting upright; but when I started seriously analyzing the chessboard, he leaned back and closed his eyes - almost at the same moment Karpov, who wasn't looking at the psychologist, started rocking in his chair!"

Escalation occurred following game 7 when Korchnoi lost his composure coming off the stage with a loud yell and poking Zukhar in the nose after which match organizers made the decision to move Zukhar away from the front row for the remainder of the matches. Korchnoi decided to enact countermeasures of his own by wearing mirrored sunglasses to protect himself from both Karpov's staring and Zukhar's alleged hypnotic influence, the Karpov camp unsurprisingly took issue with these glasses with non-based accusations of cheating.

Korchnoi also wielded parapsychology support on his side by calling in his own support team: Vladimir Bergina (an Israeli psychologist), and later Steven Dwyer and Victoria Shepperd from Ananda Marga, who taught him transcendental meditation. Wearing white and saffron garments and being conspicuously displayed in the lotus position, the two attended games with Dwyer spending much of it in meditation and Sheppard concentrating on Zukhar and the players as though to counter the "hypnotist". However the controversy doesn't end there!

It came to light that Dwyer and Shepperd were out on bail for the attempted murder of an Indian diplomat in February 1978! Following this revelation, the pair were evicted from the Baguio Convention Center where the championship match was taking place. Korchnoi recruited parapsychology students to fill their void. Korchnoi claimed that: "While Zukhar was close to the stage, Karpov won five games against me and lost just one, and from the point Zukhar was removed - I won four games!"

More drama unfolded that one could argue would rival the plot of a well-written sitcom when in September 1978, the Baguio police arrested three people who threatened to use black magic on Korchnoi and make him lose unless they were paid $15,000. Wow! I imagine what it would have been like to be a fly on the wall at the time of the 1978 World Chess Championship to witness this controversy-laden match!

Answer: Created a rival chess organization and held a separate World Championship.

Considered one of the greatest chess grandmasters of all time, Garry Kasparov had a peak FIDE chess rating of 2851 achieved in 1999, which was the highest recorded at the time until being surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. From 1984 until his retirement from regular competitive chess in 2005, Kasparov was ranked the world's No. 1 player for 255 months overall, a still-standing record at the end of 2025.

It is no secret that Kasparov has long harbored criticism for FIDE pronounced ("fee-day") which means Fédération Internationale des Échecs, the French name for the International Chess Federation, the global governing body for chess that organizes major tournaments. The origination for the split stems back to 1986 when Kasparov established the GMA or Grandmaster's Association akin to a player's union that would better represent the players and give them more autonomy in FIDE's activities and decision making.

Kasparov took a leadership role in the newly created GMA and with his influence managed to organize a series of 6 World Cup Tournaments for the top players from 1986-1993 which led to an uneasy relationship between Kasparov and FIDE. Kasparov prior to establishing GMA, relayed to a fellow GM his feelings for then FIDE president Campomanes: "Campomanes must go. It is war to the death with him as far as I am concerned. I will do everything I can to remove him."

The split fractured significantly when in 1993, after Nigel Short defeated Karpov and Timman to become the official challenger, FIDE president Florencio Campomanes broke the rules by simply announcing the venue of the winning bid as being Manchester, without properly consulting the defending World Champion (Kasparov) and the Challenger (Short) as required by FIDE regulations.
According to Kasparov, Short phoned him before the Linares 1993 tournament and unexpectedly suggested playing the match outside FIDE's framework, as had been done before 1948. Kasparov agreed, hoping to create a new, professional organization.

Kasparov and Short followed through and formed the Professional Chess Association (PCA) and held their World Championship match at the Savoy Theatre in London in September-October 1993 . Kasparov prevailed in the inaugural match 12.5-7.5.
As a result of the unauthorized PCA match, FIDE stripped Kasparov of his title, removed him and Short from their rating lists, and arranged a match between Timman and Karpov, whom Short had beaten in the Candidates final and semifinal respectively. Karpov won that match to become FIDE World Chess Champion.

For the first time in history, there were two rival World Chess Champions, a situation which persisted until the World Chess Championship of 2006 which functioned as a reunification match between 2004 PCA winner Vladimir Kramnik and 2005 FIDE champion winner Anatoly Karpov with the winner of this match claiming a unified title, a negotiation dubbed the "Prague agreement" which effectively ended the rift between the now defunct PCA and FIDE.

In a 2007 interview, Kasparov candidly admitted that his break from FIDE in 1993 was the worst mistake of his career and hurt the game of chess in the long run.

Answer: Deep Blue

Deep Blue versus Gerry Kasparov was a series of exhibition matches that pitted Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov against machine IBM chess supercomputer "Deep Blue". The inaugural series took place in 1996 where Kasparov prevailed 4-2 in Philadelphia.

However the following year in 1997 was when a computer finally bested a grandmaster by winning a match under tournament conditions, with Deep Blue winning the series rematch 3.5 to 2.5 in New York City. Controvery arose during game 2, when Deep Blue with the white pieces played moves 36 & 37 leaving Kasparov in a losing position with the black pieces, a sequence of moves which Garry attributed as being too sophisticated for a machine to perform, inferring there was an element of human intervention involved.

IBM maintained that Deep Blue did not receive direct human assistance during the games, though the team analyzed Kasparov's games extensively and refined the program's algorithms between matches. IBM also refused to share Deep Blue's game logs or allow Kasparov to study its games afterward.
After the match, Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM retired Deep Blue, leaving many questions unanswered. The computer was dismantled and never played again, which only added fuel to ongoing conspiracy theories.

Later on in Kasparov's life, he would recant his original views, in a 2016 interview, Kasparov said after much analysis and looking at both his own and the computer's play that he takes back his conclusions on what happened during this game. In 2017, he wrote in his book "Deep Thinking": "My loss to Deep Blue was also a victory for humans, its creators and everyone who benefits from our technological leaps."

Answer: France

At the 2010 Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, three French players orchestrated one of the most sophisticated cheating schemes in chess history. While Feller was in the playing hall, Marzolo was in France where he checked the best moves with a chess computer, then sent the move in coded pairs of numbers by text message to Hauchard. Once Hauchard had the suggested move, he would position himself in the hall behind one of the other players' tables in a predefined coded system, where each table represented a move to play.

The scheme was discovered by accident when French Chess Federation Vice-President Joanna Pomian, visiting Marzolo's house for an unrelated reason, noticed text messages being exchanged between Hauchard and Marzolo during the games. Around 200 text messages were sent during the tournament.

Feller received a ban of two years and nine months, and in 2019, he was sentenced by a French court to a suspended 6-months prison sentence because the cheating amounted to the crime of fraud in the French civil penalty code.

Ukraine ended up winning the Olympiad and the remaining non-involved members of the French team ended up placing 10th overall.

Answer: Soviet Union

One of chess's most historically significant controversies involved no electronic devices at all for a change, just alleged backroom deals between Soviet players. At the 1962 Candidates Tournament in Curacao, American grandmaster Bobby Fischer finished fourth, failing to qualify for the World Championship.

Fischer accused Soviet players of colluding at the 1962 Candidates Tournament, alleging that top Soviet players, including Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, and Efim Geller, had prearranged to draw their games against each other, conserving energy for later rounds and ensuring a Soviet victory.

All twelve games between Petrosian, Geller and Keres were drawn, in an average of just 19 moves. These quick draws allowed the Soviet players to conserve energy while playing full-strength games against non-Soviet opponents like Fischer.

After Fischer published an article in Sports Illustrated titled "The Russians Have Fixed World Chess", FIDE responded to the allegations by changing the format of future Candidates' Tournaments and later on Soviet team head Yuri Averbakh confirmed the existence of a drawing pact in a future interview.

Eventually Bobby Fischer would enact his revenge, which is covered in the next question.

Answer: Boris Spassky

Bobby Fischer's 1972 World Championship match against Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky was plagued by controversy from the start. Fischer arrived in Iceland days late and nearly didn't come at all until the prize fund was doubled and US diplomat Henry Kissinger personally intervened! After losing Game 1, Fischer refused to appear for Game 2, protesting television cameras in the hall, resulting in a forfeit that put him down 2-0. He then demanded Game 3 be played in a private backstage room which doubled as a ping-pong recreational room which organizers granted, and he won brilliantly. Throughout the match, Fischer constantly complained about lighting, chairs, cameras, noise, and playing conditions, forcing organizers to make numerous concessions. Despite the chaos including Spassky's team X-raying Fischer's chair for hidden devices, Fischer won decisively 12.5-8.5 to become World Champion.

Bobby Fischer was a brilliant chess prodigy whose legacy and dominance on the chessboard is unfortunately overshadowed by his bombastic personality which led to significant controversies in his lifetime including Fischer's 1992 rematch against Spassky in Yugoslavia violating international sanctions, leading to a warrant for his arrest from the US government, and ironically spewing antisemitic phrases which was bizarre since Fischer's mother was Jewish, making him technically Jewish under traditional Jewish law. Despite these blemishes, Fischer certainly made an impact on re-igniting chess interest in the US following his period of peak dominance.