Cheating has been a hot topic in the chess world for some time now, including among the world's elite. Last year, we notably discussed the "Kramnik affair," a former world champion who embarked on a veritable crusade to save his sport from this scourge using methods that were, to say the least, questionable. This topic has just returned to the table in a particularly spectacular way, when an internet star was caught red-handed during a tournament for celebrities.
PogChamps, a major tournament among celebrities
To provide context, the events took place during the latest edition of PogChamps. This is an annual tournament organized by Chess.com, the platform that has dominated online chess for several years now.
Its unique feature is that it is not aimed at high-level players: instead, streamers, influencers, and other celebrities compete for a prize of $100,000. Admittedly, the level of play is rather mediocre – but the presence of many stars such as streamers xQc, Ludwig Ahgren and Pokimane, videographer MrBeast, professional LoL player Sardoche, rapper Logic and even Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight in The Office, has given the event significant media exposure, which is regularly followed by millions of internet users.
This is where DrLupo comes in, a Twitch star known for his prowess in numerous battle royales (PUBG, Fortnite, etc.) as well as for his charity work. He has notably used his fame to raise several million dollars for various causes, including St. Jude Children's Hospital. He has thus carved out a reputation for himself as an honest and positive personality, far from the controversies that many of his colleagues have had to deal with… But this impeccable image was seriously tarnished during the sixth edition of PogChamps.
A beginner who suddenly plays like a Grandmaster
In Group B of the qualifying phase, DrLupo found himself opposed to Hungrybox, a professional Super Smash Bros. Melee player for Team Liquid. As it happens, it's also the team of Fabiano Caruana, one of the greatest chess players of the modern era (ranked 5th in the world at the time of writing), who was recruited earlier this year. This is becoming increasingly common practice in a context where online chess is becoming a true esport in its own right.
Curious to see how his teammate was doing, Caruana started following his games. A rare occurrence, because PogChamps has very little interest for this professional who competes at the highest world level: it's as if a Nobel Prize winner suddenly decided to settle in at the back of a middle school physics class. Caruana therefore expected to see series of nonsensical moves, light years from the level he is used to.
"Usually, when I watch these games, the moves make no sense. Big mistakes happen very quickly, most moves have no clear objective, the calculation is an abstract and distant notion," he explains in his podcast C-Squared. So he was extremely surprised to find that some of DrLupo's punches were much more subtle and precise than he expected.
Intrigued, he turned his attention to the Twitch star's next match, which pitted him against streamer WolfeyVGC. The latter was the clear favorite due to his ELO rating, which was significantly higher than DrLupo's (1320 versus around 628). And this difference in experience quickly became apparent. DrLupo fell into a devious trap set by his opponent, leading to the loss of his queen—the most important piece in chess—and leaving him in a desperate situation.
But instead of giving up, he began chaining together incredibly precise and subtle moves that, in the eyes of Caruana and other experts, were all well beyond the reach of a player of his skill level. The game then ended with a lunar sequence where DrLupo, instead of capturing the queen that his opponent had in turn offered him on a silver platter following a mistake, launched into a series of moves with incredible precision, worthy of a computer, to deliver a magnificent checkmate.
A blatant case of cheating
Enough to set off all the internal alarms of Caruana and the other high-level players who were witnessing this veritable purge. How could a novice player lose his queen to a rudimentary trap, then suddenly start playing at the level of a world champion within minutes?
As you might expect, the answer was obvious: DrLupo had cheated by discreetly using an extremely advanced chess program, capable of beating any grandmaster hands down.
These programs, designed to allow players to analyze their games after the fact, regularly find themselves at the center of cheating scandals, including at the highest levels. The difference is that high-level cheaters are usually very solid chess players despite their misdeeds. They are experienced enough to use these programs sparingly and subtly to cover their tracks. For example, they may only use them once at a critical moment in the game to find a perfect move that they could have identified themselves given enough time. In these cases, doubt is therefore allowed, and it is often difficult to sort things out.
But the situation is radically different with beginners like DrLupo. Players at this level are simply incapable of finding such precise and subtle sequences of moves, even if they are given several hours to analyze the position. He probably didn't realize the extent of the statistical anomaly he had just given birth to: for all observers, it was absolutely indisputable proof of cheating.
"It's theoretically possible to play the best theoretical moves 26 times in a row by chance... but the probabilities are probably in the order of 1 in a trillion," Caruana summarizes.
The person concerned initially vigorously denied it, claiming that he had simply played the best games of his life. But no one was fooled: the axe finally fell a few hours later, when DrLupo "voluntarily withdrew from PogChamps 6" to "maintain the competitive integrity" of the tournament. A timid, half-hearted admission, which was followed by a long mea culpa on X following pressure from the community... and the banning of his Chess.com account, a measure that left little room for interpretation.
A threat to the future of chess
The event itself is therefore saved... but the impact of this affair is unfortunately more profound.
The community's outcry against this once-popular streamer is primarily because, beyond the simple dishonesty of one individual, this case provides even more exposure to the rampant problem of cheating in chess. By cheating so blatantly and unashamedly, DrLupo has reminded everyone that a malicious player can easily wreak havoc in any event, regardless of the level. We already knew that the competitive integrity of this millennia-old game was hanging by a thread in the computer age, and this case only reinforces this observation.
This situation also raises a host of other uncomfortable questions about the future of chess. As technology advances, cheaters have more sophisticated tools at their disposal to carry out their misdeeds. More and more observers are already fearing that we are heading towards a situation where it will be completely impossible to identify cases of cheating, which would be catastrophic for the entire discipline.
For chess lovers, it will therefore be interesting to observe the evolution of cheat detection methods, while keeping an eye on these technologies that are completely shaking up the foundations of this sport, which is increasingly being played on a digital level – for better or for worse.
Online chess: how a world champion's accusations set the internet ablaze
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