Originally posted by SMesq
;-)) Well someone's got to provide a foil to the 'lynch him!' mentallity going around.

I feel sorry for him. If he cheated, of course that's very bad & clearly he's already paying the price. If he didn't cheat (and his Houdini-matching is a coincidence) then he's paying the same price anyway.

He's been tried by the media's kangeroo court with almost every chess player ready to join the hue and cry. I don't like it.

No one wants to lynch the guy. The reaction has been IMO appropriate; he has been forced to retire from chess and he has taken a beating in the press, but that's exactly what I would expect. People understandably loathe a cheater. At least no one grabbed him in a bathroom stall and assaulted him as in another suspected cheat case.

The evidence against him is largely circumstantial, but that's in part because they cannot forcibly search him. They don't have a warrant to search his house for the shoes, etc.

I can see the Houdini matching being a coincidence over a few games. But not when it's tourney after tourney, and by a guy who had no previous remarkable results and then starts beating GMs left and right.