DrLupo was disqualified from streamer chess tournament PogChamps 6 then proceeded to lie about it multiple times.
Benjamin "DrLupo" Lupo was kicked out of PogChamps 6 after a "fair play violation," announced host Chess.com. The streamer later admitted to cheating on his games, and then was promptly called out for lying about his methods. He once again admitted to his faults and told everyone the truth. Here's the full story.
DrLupo cheats in PogChamps 6
DrLupo was against competitive Pokémon player and content creator Wolfe "WolfeyVGC" Glick when the allegations of cheating arose. He made a move that resulted in him losing his queen, took a minute to decide his next move, and demolished Wolfey in the rest of the match. It's worth noting that, while neither are established chess players, Wolfey has a rating of 1340 on Chess.com and DrLupo's is 612. He took the series against Wolfey, 2-0.
After the series, DrLupo was called out for cheating by his chat. He defended himself, saying the only reason he kept looking to his left side was that he was used to his chat being there, but he had the chat window closed. DrLupo said that his wins against Wolfey were due to him having "a couple of lucky games."
He even hopped on a call with Wolfey after the match. "I'm sure you didn't instigate it, I'm assuming, but now my chat as well as social media has an inundation saying that I cheated against you," DrLupo told Wolfey. Wolfey took the losses and the accusations in grace, saying that he did not feed into it. "I believe you, I believe you didn't cheat," said Wolfey.
Soon after, he made an X post saying that he decided to withdraw from the competition to "help maintain competitive integrity" while admitting that he got move information from the main stream's chat.
However, the official Chess.com X account swiftly countered, saying that he was kicked from the tournament due to a fair-play violation. "Receiving any help during a match is a violation of our [fair play] policy and will result in a [disqualification] and account closure."
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"I betrayed the trust of the chess community... I deserved it. I f****d up," is what DrLupo said afterwards. He also apologized to Wolfey. DrLupo then pointed out the irony of him being the one getting caught cheating since he was a vocal adversary of Escape from Tarkov cheaters. "It's funny too because I'm the Tarkov guy who's always very anti-cheater."
He admitted to lying about the manner in which he cheated, too. In a later stream, he admitted to using a chess engine, meaning he was inputting the moves on a computer and then playing the best possible move suggested.
Macaiyla has taken DrLupo's spot in the tournament.
Community reacts to DrLupo's chess cheating incident
As expected, the community backlash that DrLupo is experiencing after all this is extremely negative. Multiple Reddit threads have been made about the incident, with each garnering several hundred or even thousands of comments.
The initial post that called out the difference in his skill and performance called it "blatant cheating." The post had a lot of discussions, with some even explaining the difference to people unfamiliar with chess. "DrLupo did the equivalent of sneaking a calculator into a mental math competition and caught using the calculator for 20 problems in a row when he couldn't even do multiplication prior to taking out the calculator," Reddit user Awesome_Days commented.
The acceptance of guilt and fault that followed from the streamer further broke his integrity in the space. "He said he cheated by looking at chat/broadcast moves/etc. Not that he used an engine. Kinda makes you wonder if he's cheated in any other games he's played," wrote Reddit user leaf_blowr.
Even after being caught, he was never interested in being upfront and 100% truthful and constantly thinking about what he can get away with not admitting, and how to downplay it as much as possible," another user commented. "Makes you think what else he conveniently lies about."
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