It has already been some time that cheating is a burning subject in the world of failures, including within the world elite. Last year, we notably mentioned ” The Kramnik affair», A former world champion who embarked on a real crusade to save his sport from this scourge with methods to say the least… questionable. This theme has just returned to the table in a particularly spectacular way, when a web star was taken in the bag during a tournament intended for celebrities.
Pogchamps, a big tournament between celebrities
To re -situate the context, the facts took place during the last edition of Pogchamps. It is an annual tournament organized by Chess.com, the platform that has dominated online failures for several years already.
Its peculiarity is that it is not intended for high -level players: instead, it is streamers, influencers and other celebrities who face it to win a nostrum of $ 100,000. Admittedly, the level of play is therefore rather poor – but the presence of many stars like streamers XQC, Ludwig Ahgren et Nodulesthe videographer MrBeastthe professional player of lol Sardochethe rapper Logic or even Rainn Wilsonthe interpreter of Dwight in The Office has given a very important media exhibition to the event, which is regularly followed by millions of Internet users.
This is where Drlupo comes in, a Twitch star known for his prowess in many Battle Royales (PUBG, Fortnite …) as well as for his charitable works. He notably used his notoriety to collect several million dollars for the benefit of various causes, including the St. Jude children’s hospital. So he carved out a reputation of an honest and positive personalityfar from the controversies to which many of his colleagues were dealing … but this impeccable image was seriously targeted during the sixth edition of Pogchamps.
A beginner who suddenly plays like a great master
In group B of the qualifying phase, Drlupo found himself opposed to Hungrybox, professional player of Super Smash Bros. MeleeFor the Team Liquid team. However, it turns out that it is also the team of Fabiano Caruana, one of the greatest chess players in the modern era (5th in the world at a time when these lines are written), which was recruited there earlier in the year. An increasingly common practice in a context where online failures are becoming a real full eSport.
Curious to see how his teammate managed, Caruana therefore started to follow his games. A rare fact, because Pogchamps has very little interest in this professional who evolves at the highest world level: it is as if a Nobel Prize suddenly decided to settle in the bottom of a college level physics. Caruana therefore expected to see series of strokes without tail or head, light years from the level at which he is used to.
« In general, when I look at these games, the blows have no meaning. The big mistakes arrive very quickly, most of the blows have no clear goal, calculation is an abstract and distant concept “He explains in his podcast C-Squared . He was therefore extremely surprised to note that some of Drlupo’s blows were Much more subtle and precise than what he expected.
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Intrigued, he therefore paid his attention to the next match of the Twitch star, which opposed it to the Streamer Wolfeyvgc. The latter was largely favorite because of its Elo classification, much higher than that of Drlupo (1320 against around 628). And this difference in experience quickly appeared. Drlupo fell into a sneaky trap set by his opponent, leading to the loss of his queen – the most important piece to failures – and leaving him in a desperate situation.
But instead of abdicating, he began to chain tremendously precise and subtle blows which, from the point of view of Caruana and other experts, were all largely out of reach of a player of his level. The game then concluded on a lunar sequence where Drlupo, instead of capturing the queen that her opponent in turn offered her on a silver set following an error, embarked on a series of blows with an incredible precision, worthy of a computer, to deliver a beautiful mat.
A case of flagrant cheat
Enough to trigger all the internal alarms of Caruana and other high -level players who attended this real purge. How could a beginner player lose his queen following a rudimentary trap, then suddenly starting to play at a world champion in the space of a few minutes?
As you certainly imagine, the answer was obvious: Drlupo had cheated discreetly using an extremely advanced chess programcapable of beat any great master with flat sewing.
These programs, designed to allow players to analyze their games after the fact, regularly find themselves in the heart of cheating scandals, including at the highest level. The difference is that high -level cheaters are generally very solid chess players despite their misdeeds. They have Enough experience to use these programs sparingly and subtlety in order to blur the tracks. For example, they can only use them once at a critical moment of the game to find a perfect blow that they could have identified themselves with enough time. In these cases, doubt is therefore allowed, and it is often difficult to share things.
But the situation is radically different with beginners like Drlupo. Players of this level are simply unable to find such sequences of precise and subtle blowseven if we give them several hours to analyze the position. He therefore undoubtedly did not achieve the magnitude of the statistical anomaly which he had just given birth: for all observers, it was an absolutely indisputable proof of cheating.
« It is theoretically possible to play the best theoretical blows 26 times in a row by chance … but the probabilities are probably around 1 out of thousands of billionsBaptized: Carruta’s caring.
The interested party began by denying vigorously, saying that he had simply played the best parts of his life. But no one was fooled: the cleaver ended up falling a few hours later, when Drlupo was ” voluntarily withdrawn from Pogchamps 6 » pour“Maintain competitive integrityFrom the tournament. A shy admission, half-words, which was followed by a longmy guiltOn X following the community pressure … and the banishment of its Chess.com account, a measure which left little room for interpretation.
Twitter-tweet” data-width=”500″ data-dnt=”true”>
I screwed up big time. The internet has been right basically since the beginning, and it’s taken me multiple waves of self reflection and internal fighting to get to the point where I can fully admit fault without holding back. I lied to the internet, repeatedly. I cheated, and…
— DrLupo (@DrLupo) May 2, 2025
A threat to the future of failures
The event itself is therefore saved … But the impact of this case is unfortunately deeper.
If the community has thus been unleashed against this formerly acclaimed streamer, it is first of all because beyond the simple manhonesty of an individual, this affair offers even more exposure to this crawling problem that is chess to chess. By cheating so blatant and uninhibited way, Drlupo has reminded everyone that an ill -intentioned player can easily sow chaos in any eventwhatever the level. We already knew that the competitive integrity of this multimillenary game was just due to a thread in the era of computers, and this affair only strengthens this observation.
This situation also rests a lot of other uncomfortable questions about the future of failures. The more the technology advances, the more the cheaters have sophisticated tools to engage in their misdeeds. More and more observers already fear that one will be found in a situation where it will be completely impossible to identify cheat caseswhich would be catastrophic for the whole discipline.
For chess lovers, it will therefore be interesting to observe the evolution of cheat detection methods, while keeping an eye on these technologies which are completely upsetting the foundations of this sport which is playing more and more in digital ground – for the best and for the worst.
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