The Gamblers Behind One of Chess's Weirdest Unsolved Cheating Mysteries Have Been Unmasked

The modern era of cheating successful chess began connected a Thursday successful July 1993, erstwhile a antheral with shoulder-length dreadlocks walked into the World Open tourney successful Philadelphia and registered arsenic John von Neumann. Both the hairsbreadth and the sanction were phony.

The existent Von Neumann was a salient mathematician and machine idiosyncratic who died successful 1957. The fake Von Neumann had a suspicious buzzing bulge successful his pocket, fought a grandmaster to a draw, past fled earlier anyone could enactment retired who helium was.

A Boston Globe columnist called it “one of the strangest cheating episodes successful chess history.” Chess.com recorded the “Von Neumann incident” arsenic “the earliest known lawsuit of a imaginable machine cheater.”

This was decades earlier chess pros started getting expelled from tournaments for utilizing smartphones, and a beingness earlier the caller buzzing anal beads scandal. (Google it, but not astatine work.) It was years up of Garry Kasparov’s decision by IBM’s Deep Blue, successful an epoch erstwhile humans inactive imagined themselves to beryllium smarter than machines. The individuality of the antheral with the dreadlocks has remained 1 of the game’s astir enduring mysteries. Until now.

I stumbled crossed the culprits portion researching Lucky Devils, my caller publication astir gamblers utilizing subject and exertion to triumph astatine blackjack, poker, roulette and, connected this occasion, chess. The pursuing excerpt is based connected my interviews with the gamblers progressive and the tournament’s organizers and participants, arsenic good arsenic contemporaneous reports. Wherever possible, details person been independently verified.

Rob Reitzen packed airy for the formation from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. He had to. His suitcase was stuffed with machine equipment, switches, wires, and buzzers. Sitting adjacent to him connected the level was his champion person John Wayne, known to everyone successful their unit of nonrecreational gamblers arsenic “the Duke,” aft his Hollywood namesake.

It was June 1993, conscionable earlier the commencement of the World Open chess tournament, hosted by the City of Brotherly Love. Reitzen and Wayne some fancied themselves arsenic players. It was however they’d archetypal met. The Duke had posted a flyer, inviting challenges against “John Wayne, chess champion and arm-wrestling champion.” Reitzen had responded and recovered himself sitting other a Black ex-soldier with a megawatt smile, opening a narration built connected competitory pranks.

Their existent calling, though, was gambling—specifically the high-tech kind. Reitzen, a dyslexic savant with a mop of curly hairsbreadth permanently concealed nether a shot cap, earned a surviving with wearable gadgets. He’d utilized an adapted Zilog Z80 microprocessor, astir the size of a battalion of cards, to process the shifting possibilities successful blackjack, past developed a akin instrumentality to bash the aforesaid successful California’s poker rooms. For a while, Reitzen and Wayne utilized a strategy with a tiny camera wrong a player’s loop buckle. Outside, successful a motortruck with a communications crockery bolted to the side, teammates could intermission its footage, zoom in, and spot the blackjack dealer’s hidden paper for a divided 2nd arsenic it was placed look down connected the felt. Was it cheating? Probably. But the profits spoke louder than immoderate ethical doubts they mightiness person had.

Since specified machines were banned successful casinos, they had to beryllium concealed carefully. Reitzen and his players sent accusation to the computers utilizing toed switches built into their shoes and received instructions backmost from a vibrating container hidden successful the crotch.

On accomplishment successful Philadelphia, the Duke wired himself up, putting connected a brace of headphones to unafraid his wig. He wore 1 of their blackjack processors, modified to pass with Reitzen, who would presumption himself, retired of sight, successful beforehand of a slope of monitors successful their edifice country moving his homemade chess software. The 2 friends looked astatine each other, Reitzen grinning. This was it—their changeable astatine chess immortality.

On the introduction form, Wayne wrote the sanction John von Neumann. “As successful … the begetter of crippled theory?” a skeptical authoritative asked. Wayne nodded. The authoritative raised an eyebrow, past enactment Wayne into the draw.