Cheating in Chess

The chess game below is from the final round of the 2011 Golden Knights Postal Chess Championship. This game concluded not only my last game in this section but also my last game in correspondence chess that I played by snail mail.

The rules of the US Chess Federation (USCF) prohibit using chess engines to help analyze a  correspondence chess game that is still in progress. My opponent used Stockfish 6 to help him decide whether or not to trade rooks and to accept my draw offer. I did not discover this illegal use of a chess engine until after the game was over and I started to look at it with my own engines. I did not file a complaint about this because the use of this engine did not affect the outcome of the game. I got the draw that I wanted.

It is impossible to go into the engine room at playchess.com without using your own engine. Checking to see if someone else has analyzed a given position in the engine room could be considered cheating by a strict interpretation of the rules, but I will allow it because I do that too. What I object to is someone staying there more than a minute. If they are there long enough to get credit for discovering a position, then they are definitely cheating!

Posted below are screenshots of the engine use.

Michael R. Serovey, MA, MISM