Teledildonics and Chess: The Unexpected Possibilities That Could Enhance Sex

Want to up your game? Dr. David Levy explains whether you can actually use vibrating anal beads to cheat at chess.

When I launched the “Love and Sex with Robots” field with my book in 2007, I never dreamed that the subject could intersect with my career as a professional chess player.

Now the intersection of the two subjects has become a trended topic due to the furor around the suggestion by the reigning World Chess Champion, Magnus Carlsen, that a fellow grandmaster might have cheated at the chess board.

Specifically, the link between chess and teledildonics is the idea that Carlsen’s opponent, the 19-year-old American Grandmaster Hans Niemann, could have been using a sex toy. Niemann was said to use anal vibrating beads to alert him to strong moves found by a superhuman chess “engine”—a computer program capable of regularly outplaying any human chess player.

Before I discuss this ostensibly ludicrous idea, I'd suggest reading Melanie Whyte’s article, Orgasms Are Great, but Have You Ever Used Vibrating Anal Beads to Cheat at Chess?

Background behind these claims

The vibrating anal beads idea gained a measure of respectability (if that is an accurate description) when Elon Musk retweeted a video that had gone viral.

Musk later deleted his tweet, but the archived version and screenshots of the video are still making the rounds on the Internet. When re-sharing the video Musk quoted the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, tweeting:

“‘Talent hits a target no one else can hit, genius hits a target no one can see (cause it’s in ur butt)' – Schopenhauer.”

In summary, what has been suggested is that wirelessly controlled anal beads could be made, by using a simple code, to vibrate in different ways to indicate which move was being recommended by a chess engine.

The anal beads suggestion is not the first time, by a few decades, that transmitting moves to something in the body of a chess player has been given any credence.

The late great World Champion Bobby Fischer feared that “the Russians” might be able to affect his thinking by transmitting data to the fillings in Fischer’s teeth, so he had all his fillings removed. Fischer revealed this fear to his long-time friend Ron Gross while on a fishing holiday in Mexico (quoted from Fred Waitzkin's book “Searching for Bobby Fischer”):

“He looked terrible… clothes all baggy, wearing old beat-up shoes… Then I noticed that he was favoring his mouth, and he told me that he’d had some work done on his teeth; he’d had a dentist take all the fillings out of his mouth… I said ‘Bobby, that’s going to ruin your teeth. Did you have him put plastic in the holes?’ And he said, ‘I didn’t have anything put in. I don’t want anything artificial in my head.’ He’d read about a guy wounded in World War II who had a metal plate in his head that was always picking up vibrations, maybe even radio transmissions. He said the same thing could happen from metal in your teeth.”

What's necessary to cheat with vibrating anal beads

Now let us consider what would be necessary for a chess player to cheat using anal vibrating beads (or fillings in their teeth).

The cheating player would need the following:

With modern technology, this would certainly be feasible using vibrating anal beads.

And they would also need:

In the past, this could be done by an associate of the cheater, as has happened in a number of well-established cases.

But nowadays, fairly stringent (though not 100% foolproof) methods are adopted by tournament organizers and arbiters to prevent the players themselves and any spectators from taking any kind of transmitting device into the tournament hall. Airline-type security equipment is employed to police such restrictions, though these are probably not foolproof.

Furthermore, it is fast becoming customary to delay, by a few minutes, the streaming of tournament chess games as they are played. That way, online audiences can see only the position and moves as they were some minutes ago, not while a player is pondering their current move. So sending an opponent’s move from inside the tournament hall to an outside computing device is certainly a non-trivial task, at the very least.

And with even stronger preventative measures soon to be discussed by the World Chess Federation (FIDE), a cheater’s task is likely to become even more problematic than it is now.

The future of teledildonics and chess

In an attempt to prove his accusers wrong, Hans Niemann has offered to play naked. Assuming such a performance would include an anal examination, it would allow him to prove his assertion that he can play as well without any hidden beads, as he has been doing in recent tournaments.

But perhaps there is another side to this whole issue—the use of sex toys and teledildonics to enhance our sex lives through chess.

After all, chess boxing has become a recognized hybrid sporting activity in just a few years, so why not chess sex?

Image sources: Karolina Grabowska