The 2016 Olympiad in Baku was staged under an atmosphere of technological suspicion. After the 2010 Sébastien Feller cheating scandal, FIDE introduced metal detectors, electronic checkpoints, transmission delays, random inspections, a ban on pens and watches, and a rule requiring players to notify the match arbiter whenever they left the playing area—even for a toilet visit. Players complained that the procedure was humiliating, that arbiters were not always available, and that an opponent could gain information simply by seeing a player leave the board. Critics also noted that mobile phones could still be heard ringing in the venue and that some competitors could apparently evade the first security barrier by passing objects around the metal detectors.
The most public clash came in the seventh-round game between England's Nigel Short and China's Li Chao. Returning from the toilet with roughly 30 minutes left to make 20 moves, Short was asked by an anti-cheating arbiter to submit to a hand scan for electronic devices. He declined and resumed play, later receiving a warning from chief anti-cheating official Klaus Deventer. Short argued that the inspection was an unreasonable interruption and questioned whether the selection of the test had been entirely neutral, noting a prior political history with the arbiter involved. Early accounts portrayed the incident as a dramatic full search during a do-or-die time scramble, but later descriptions established that it was a spot-check request rather than the more sensationalized confrontation. The episode nevertheless became a symbol of FIDE's struggle to prevent cheating without making elite chess players feel treated like suspects.
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