Chess champ's cheat flushed out after he was caught using iPhone hidden in toilet to plan moves

Gaioz Nigalidze's rise through the ranks of professional chess began in 2007, the year the first iPhone was released. In hindsight, the timing might not be coincidental.

On Saturday, Nigalidze, the 25-year-old reigning Georgian champion, was competing in the 17th annual Dubai Open Chess Tournament when his opponent spotted something strange.

"Nigalidze would promptly reply to my moves and then literally run to the toilet," Armenian grandmaster Tigran Petrosian said. "I noticed that he would always visit the same toilet partition, which was strange, since two other partitions weren't occupied."

Petrosian complained to the officials. After Nigalidze left the bathroom once more, officials inspected the interior and said they found an iPhone wrapped in toilet paper and hidden behind the toilet.

"When confronted, Nigalidze denied he owned the device," according to the tournament's website. "But officials opened the smart device and found it was logged into a social networking site under Nigalidze's account. They also found his game being analysed in one of the chess applications."

Nigalidze was expelled from the tournament and his career is now under a microscope. Under recently tightened rules against cheating, he could be banned for up to 15 years.

But the scandal threatens to spread far beyond the gleaming white Dubai Chess & Culture Club, which is shaped like a giant rook. Nigalidze's expulsion is a nightmare scenario for chess: proof that technologically enabled cheating, rumoured for more than a decade, is real. Thanks to smartphones, the game of kings is starting to look like the game of crooks.