Chess arbiter Preeti Deshmukh follows a player’s eye movements just as keenly as she watches their manoeuvres on the board. Anyone whose gaze shifts sharply to the right of left comes under scrutiny. She asks such players to pan the surveilling camera around their room so she can be sure there isn’t a chess engine or an enthusiastic relative in the background that is helping them outwit their opponent. “We have to be more on our toes now,” says Deshmukh, about monitoring the flourishing yet contentious format of online chess. “Many are taking the cunning which could make them excel in the sport and applying it towards cheating instead.”

Computer chess was popular even before the pandemic so when lockdowns began, the world comfortably moved matches entirely online. However, a problem raised its head as more players shunned fair play for easy glory. “No matter what the game is, when there are benefits from winning, you have cheating,” Arkady Dvorkovich, president of chess governing body FIDE had said in 2020. A year and some months later, that problem has not gone away.