Hello Mr Bauer! You played a game with Anna in round 2 that she is particularly happy about. Did you have the feeling that she might be getting external help ?
I didn’t think so during the game and right after. It only occurred to me that there was a chance she did, when she had scored 4/4 and some other players were complaining, but I considered the probability to be very small. I then looked at her games with some friends of mine from the organization, they were checking with some program if Anna’s moves were matching the (or most of the) suggestions of the engine. It was fairly clear that she was playing her own moves, so my little doubts were even reduced.
Have you analyzed the game with an engine afterwards?
Not too much, I only checked briefly with the above-mentioned friends. I remember that the engine was suggesting something very different than the game continuation right at the start. Then there were many options, but I don’t think Anna’s moves were matching the computer’s ones “too often”.
Do you have the pgn file from the Vandoeuvre open?
No, I don’t. To summarize, the game was balanced for the first 25-30 moves, then I lost a pawn in an ending that my opponent duly converted. We were in time-trouble for the last 20 moves or so, and couldn’t leave the table. Although the position wasn’t too difficult at that point, Anna played it faultlessly and earned a deserved point.
What do you think about the behavior of the Latvian players?
This is a difficult question, because there are obviously two cases. Either they wanted to disturb a young girl, and this is not nice, to say the least, or they really believed Anna was cheating. I don’t know Krivonosov and Starostits very well, but I met the former at Geneva open this year. At some point I found a nice move and won the game. After resigning he complimented me. I know Lazarev a bit more. The fact that he offered a draw so quickly when he met Anna tends to prove that he really believed she got external help. I shall add that some other titled players believed Anna was cheating, and they found it strange that she was “so often” – they said – outside the playing hall. Another argument was that she had dropped some 40 rating points between the July list and the October one (nothing extraordinary when you are young, in my view). All in all I understand their behaviour, even if I don’t share their doubts etc., and think they really believed Anna was cheating.
Here is the full interview: http://interviews.chessdom.com/christian-bauer
This is the case of Bauer playing badly. Clearly no cheating was involved.
I like Bauer’s Clintonesqe answers.
I neither approve or condemn the behavior of the accused…
It depends on your definition of “if”…
Starostits truly believing the accusations he leveled at Rudolf is insufficient excuse if those accusations are unbacked by evidence, especially when consensus opinion is that the accusations are absurd.
Imagine a legal trial where someone is on trial for murder but is claiming self-defense. “I thought she had a gun and was going to shoot me, so I had to shoot her first!”.
Even if the court believes that the person felt self-defense was necessary, the court should and will convict if the court determines that the defendant’s belief was ‘unreasonable’.
In most sports it is considered cheating to make accusations against your opponents without evidense, regardless of if you “believe” them or not.
An excellent interview by Bauer. His opinion seems to be the most unbiased among the other ones in this story.