Sebastien Feller is a French-born chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 Grandmaster.

Chess career

Feller achieved both his International Master and Grandmaster titles in 2007 at age 17. He won the French Junior Championship 2007 and was vice-champion of the European U16 Championships 2007. He played as the 1st reserve for France in the European Team Championships 2009 held in Novi Sad

Novi Sad

Novi Sad is the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, and the administrative centre of the South Bačka District. The city is located in the southern part of Pannonian Plain on the Danube river....

, Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

 scoring +4 =4 -1. He was also French Blitz Champion 2010 and winner of the Paris championship

Paris City Chess Championship

The first Paris City Chess Championship was held in 1925....

 in July 2010. In 2010, he represented France in the 39th Chess Olympiad

39th Chess Olympiad

The 39th Chess Olympiad, organized by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place in 2010 in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, on to...

 in Khanty-Mansiysk

Khanty-Mansiysk

Khanty-Mansiysk experiences a subarctic climate . The climate is extreme, with temperatures as low as -49 C° and as high as 34.5 C°. On average, however, the region is very cold, with an average tempurature of -1.1 C°...

, Russia but was found guilty of cheating by the French Chess Federation (FFE).

39th Chess Olympiad

In October 2010, Feller scored 6/9 (+5 =2 -2) during the 39th Chess Olympiad

39th Chess Olympiad

The 39th Chess Olympiad, organized by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place in 2010 in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, on to...

 and won the Gold medal

Gold medal

A gold medal is typically the medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture...

 for best individual performance on board 5. However, the French Chess Federation accused Feller, along with French players GM Arnaud Hauchard and IM Cyril Marzolo, of cheating during the Olympiad. While Feller was in the playing hall, Marzolo was in France where he checked the best moves on the computer. Marzolo then allegedly sent the move in coded

Character encoding

A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...

 pairs of numbers

Numeral system

A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers, that is a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....

 by SMS

SMS

SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...

 to Hauchard. Once Hauchard had the suggested move, he would position himself in the hall behind one of the other players’ tables in a predefined coded system, where each table represented a move to play. The French Chess Fedration claims, in all, 200 text messages were sent during the tournament. The scam was supposedly uncovered by Joanna Pomian, the federation's vice-president.

Feller has released a statement (in French) in defense of himself:

Official Statement of GM Sebastien Feller (translated)

Translation by Jean-Michel Blatrier

The French Chess Federation has taken disciplinary measures against the three players.

Notable games

- David Howell vs Sebastien Feller, Khanty Mansiysk 2010, 0-1

- Sebastien Feller - Robert Markus, Khanty Mansiysk 2010, 1-0

- Sebastien Feller - Tamaz Gelashvili, Khanty Mansiysk 2010, 1-0

- Ivan Morovic-Fernandez - Sebastien Feller, Aeroflot Open 2010, 0-1

- Artyom Timofeev - Sebastien Feller, Khanty Mansiysk 2010, 0-1

- Sebastien Feller - Andrei Volokitin, Aix-les-Bains 2011, 1-0

Others

Feller is currently ranked 86th in the World, 5th in France and 70th in Europe.

His handle on the Internet Chess Club

Internet Chess Club

The Internet Chess Club is a commercial Internet chess server devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. ICC currently has over 30,000 subscribing members...

 is "GodSebFeller".

External links