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to promote civic engagement in the Philadelphia region.Suspected Sudoku cheater once questioned at chess championship
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 12:56 pm - by Alan Tu. Filed under: Community.
Eugene Varshavsky once tried his hand at a World Chess tournament. He coincidentally he used the same moves from the Shredder chess program
THAT Eugene Varshavsky sure is talented.
Over the weekend a man using that name placed third in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s National Sudoku Championship taking home $3000. In 2006, a Eugene Varshavsky was beating top chess champions in an event also in Philadelphia. That is until he was asked to remove his hat. He initially resisted then complied. Without the hat he quickly lost the next two games and was eliminated. The New York Times even ran a story about this.
In fact, chess expert Larry Christiansen later sat down in front of the computer chess game Shredder and used the moves Varshavsky’s opponent made, and the computer executed the exact sequence that Varshavsky used in the tournament.
This all happened at the World Open in Philadelphia held June 28 to July 4, 2006. Here’s what chess blogger Sam Sloan wrote about the incident on his blog Alverchess.com.
There is still no proof that Eugene Varshavsky, better known as “The Man with the Hat,” was using electronic devices. However, the circumstantial evidence was considerable. After suspicions arose, he was invited to the tournament directors room to be searched. He
suddenly exclaimed that he had to go to the restroom and bolted for the door. He spent about twenty minutes in the toilet stall, then came out and proceeded calmly to the tournament directors room where he was searched. The search revealed nothing. After leaving the directors room, he went back to the same toilet stall and spent another twenty
minutes in there. Nobody had thought to check the toilet stall after he had left the first time.Later, a second attempt was made to search him. Again he bolted and got rid of whatever he had hidden in his hat before he was searched. Again, the search revealed nothing.
After defeating Grandmaster Smirin, the highest rated player in the U.S. in Round 7, he came to the board for Round 8 wearing his usual hat. Assistant TD Carol Jarecki told him that he had to take his hat off while playing the game. Eventually he complied, and he lost easily to Grandmaster Najer.
Varshavsky is back in the news this week because Sudoku judges have launched an investigation into whether he cheated. There are striking similarities between the chess player in 2006 and the Sudoku whiz of 2009. They both wore some kind of head cover. I looked and couldn’t find any pictures of the suspected cheater in either event.
Both events happened in Philadelphia. Although, this year Varshavsky claimed he lived in Lawrenceville, N.J. near Princeton and the guy in 2006 said he was from Israel.
After reading about the latest incident in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I learned that the guy who finished second in Sudoku tournament, Thomas Snyder thinks Varshavsky’s performance raised some red flags. Varshavsky was very fast in turning in his early round puzzles, but once he advanced to the final round he was asked to appear on stage without his hooded jacket on. It must have been a lucky jacket because after that he managed to only fill in one or two squares giving him his third place finish. Snyder suspects that the Varshavsky might have been wearing a hidden earpiece.
Now, I can picture an accomplice in the room watching Varshavsky play chess and programming his opponents moves into a handheld version of a computer game on a pda. But how do you cheat on Sudoku? Wouldn’t Varshavsky have to whisper what his puzzled looked like? It seems that would be harder for an accomplice to see. If he did cheat, how did he pull it off?
October 27th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
You asked how to cheat at the preliminary rounds. It’s quite simple. All contestants in his category are given the same three puzzles to solve. His accomplice can easily get ahold of the puzzles, leave the room and find a cozy corner. Then plug in the given numbers to an online sudoku solver (which solves within a moment) and then to whisper back the correct sequence of letters. He would, in theory, have the completed solutions within seconds, and then wait for six minutes or so before raising his hand. Cheating at the crossword tournament in a similar fashion is far more complex. However, the way this tournament was established, the winner of each of three rounds compete for first, second, and third prizes. So, all he had to do was cheat on the prelim round, tank on the playoff round (which he did) and walk off with third-place money. He could have gotten away with the scam had he a decent level of competence at doing Sudokus. It will be interesting to see how the rules are adapted to prevent this kind of scam. Perhaps require final round contestants to successfully complete the puzzle (even if very slowly) to receive their prize. We’ll see.
October 27th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
@Doug. Thanks for the explanation on how someone could cheat in a Sudoku tournament. But I don’t understand you final point about making everyone complete their puzzles to get their prize. You mean an additional puzzle, kind of like a High School graduation exam? You either know your stuff or your don’t?
October 27th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
I was a competitor at the competition and made public my suspicions of “Eugene” soon after the tournament on my blog where the chess connection was also made. Given competitors were allowed headphones for music, and spectators could ask for puzzles, the easiest way to imagine this cheating occurred is that an associate got copies of the puzzles, fed them into a computer solving application, and fed them back to Eugene who had easy opportunity to be concealing a transceiver over his fully covered head (he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt when I observed him turn in his round 3 paper). Fortunately, on stage, given the separate sound-dampening headsets we were as finalists, he could not begin with a listening device in his ear and without help performed like someone who had never solved a puzzle before. If there aren’t enough smoking guns here, his test papers in round 3, which would look one way (messy, with notes, maybe erasures) if he had solved the puzzles and another if he was read the answers (clean save for numbers) will be a clear sign of what went on.
October 27th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
I also have photos of this so-called “sudobomber” hood up and hood down on my blog and, since I also have found nothing of him from the chess event, I ask anyone in the chess community who remembers the guy to compare the person I show online.
October 27th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Thomas indeed has pictures of the Sudobomber on his blog. http://motris.livejournal.com/ In fact, he even has a picture of “Eugene” without his hood so you can see his face. Thomas also has written an open letter to the Sudoku community that is worth reading. Thanks for sharing with us your observations about the tournament. Thomas indeed made the discovery of the chess link first, although I stumbled across the chess story by independently running Eugene’s name in Google. Tune in on WHYY radio on Weds 10/22 to hear Peter Crimmins story featuring an interview with Thomas Snyder about the Sudobomber.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:02 am
Wow! What a story. So what could he have been concealing in his hat that would have given him the info he needed to make the correct moves?
June 7th, 2010 at 9:03 am
I know this guy’s M.O. You’ll find Eugene “shoe computer” Varshavsky in Manalapan or Englishtown.