Commentary: Video games that tolerate dishonest gamble with their future

LONDON: In Ian Fleming’s 1955 novel Moonraker, James Bond is enlisted to punish Sir Hugo Drax, a sinister industrialist who cheats at bridge on the fictional Blades membership in London. Bond fixes the playing cards and crushes Drax with an impossible-looking grand slam: “13 separate lashes whose scars no card participant would ever lose.”

“Haven’t had a dishonest case because the fourteen-eighteen struggle,” muses the membership’s chair. If that’s the case, Blades both has a outstanding code of honour or horrible powers of commentary, since worldwide bridge has suffered many real-life dishonest scandals, from an Italian staff who used foot indicators to 2 German gamers who coughed in code.

Bridge just isn’t the one sport liable to dishonest. The net platform Chess.com this week disclosed in a report that the US grandmaster Hans Niemann had “seemingly cheated” in additional than 100 on-line chess video games. It printed its investigation after Magnus Carlsen, world chess champion, accused Niemann of dishonest when the latter beat him at an in-person match.

Dishonourable conduct can be widespread in sports activities. Two fishers competing at a contest in Ohio for a $29,000 prize have been accused final week of dishonest and surrounded by offended rivals.

“We’ve bought weights in fish. Get out of right here!” shouted the choose, proclaiming they’d made their catch appear heavier by stuffing it with lead weights and fish fillets.