Sunday, April 19, 2015

Cheaters never win (or flush the toilet)

Every so often, a story that transcends the sports medium comes across our desk at The National and it's too good not to share with our loyal Soggy Dirhams Blog readers.

I think we all can agree that chess is an amazing game. Never played it before? Well then, just bare with me for a minute.

Regardless of the skyrocketing popularity for this game, no one likes a cheater.

Am I right?

So when a chess grandmaster from Georgia -- the country, not the US state -- showed up in Dubai last week and wanted to win the $12,000 award for this chess tournament, I guess he could not rely solely on his narly chess skills to bring home the cheddar. Instead, he kept a mobile phone in a nearby public bathroom and kept excusing himself to the laboratory to use a chess app on his smart phone to cheat.

The tournament officials eventually caught him and they sent us this amazing photo:


Can you guess who the cheater was? It's a tough call but I'm going to go with the shady dude in purple, who looks like he has not slept or showered in a few days.

His name is Gaioz Nigalidze and cleanliness proved to be an issue during his cheating scandal in Dubai.

According to Yahya Mohammed, the tournament director, his investigation into the frequent bathroom visits was an open-and-shut case: "The last time he went, he was in there for maybe 10 to 15 minutes -- with no flush. Nobody uses the toilet for 15 minutes without flushing," he told reporter Paul Radley of The National.

No flush? This dude just got lazy. He's probably been cheating like this for years.

After he was confronted for cheating, Nigalidze was banned for 15 years and then everyone associated with the chess world -- myself included -- let out a sigh of relief.

Click here to read the full report.

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