Dear All,

Following a decision at the Team Managers Zoom meeting I am writing to you all with a message for all players in the Coventry & Leamington Online Chess League.
This message is intended to be passed on by TM's to every player in the league.  I hope that you will be able to let me know when you have been able to do that.
The message below has been written by myself and approved by Ben Graff (Chairman), Malcolm Harding (Secretary) and Hok Chiu (Fairplay group co-ordinator).
Many thanks for your co-operation.
Colin Green, Tournament Controller.

CL & LL FAIR PLAY UPDATE FOR ALL TEAM MANAGERS AND PLAYERS

Fair play is important in all games and sports including chess. Even in over-the-board chess there have been issues with fair play but internet chess provides further opportunities for unfair assistance.

Cheating is an insult to the vast majority of honest players and a further insult to clubs and Team Managers who voluntarily give up their time to organise chess for everyone.  We do not name the innocent clubs caught up in this scourge and because we do not have a legal department, neither do we name suspect and/or barred players.

In order to assure fair play a committee led by Hok Chiu has been established to provide ongoing monitoring of players.  Furthermore the committee has been strengthened by adding personnel with additional computer and mathematical expertise.  Players in this series have been brought to our attention and to date chess.com have withdrawn the accounts of two persons who the League have also banned.  The group are continuing to monitor players to ensure fair play.

Hok and his committee have a number of resources at their disposal to detect unfair play including:
1    The expertise and experience of the group members.
2    The resources of chess.com including game analysis and the ability to search for any game or games played by any player on the platform whether or not in our league.
3    Reporting the player to chess.com.
4    Knowledge of the usual range of a player’s performance and their entire online grading history.
5    More than one powerful program which gives further detailed analysis of player performance.
6    Analysis of the time spent on each move by players.

We know that all players have highs and lows and go through good and bad spells where their playing performance varies.  This possibility is taken into account when determining whether a player appears to be using unfair assistance.  All honest players can be confident in the knowledge that we are on the job and in search of unfair play.

To those who are engaged in unfair play we would like you to know that monitoring is being carried out.  Players have been reported to chess.com and if the platform blocks your account you can be sure that we will have the confidence to take action including reversing all of your results and banning you from our league.
Your reputation is not worth the short term gratification of a few underhand wins.

Colin Green.
Tournament Controller
3rd March 2021.