The Novice Chess Team that Won Every Match of the Season

Question

Devious High School had a newly formed chess team that played against all the other high schools in the area this year. These matches are played with a 5-player team who, at a match, sit next to each other on one side of a long table, with the opposing team seated on the other side. It's customary to put your best player on Board 1 and worst on Board 5. At a match, Board 1 players do "hide-the-pawn" to see who plays White, and the other boards alternate colors, so at any match, Devious is playing White either on Boards 1, 3, and 5 or on Boards 2 and 4. Each board has its own chess clock, which operates as any chess clock in a tournament. There are 10 matches in a season.

Devious just happens to have the state's best player, Maria, who won the state title last year. Let's assume she was guaranteed to win every game she played. Unfortunately, the four other players were true novices, who barely knew the rules of chess and how the clocks worked. There was an excellent chance all of them would lose any one match.

Chess Coach Sly came up with a plan. And at the end of the season Devious High School was on top with a 10-0 record—undefeated!

Knowing:

1. Devious broke no rules of chess whatsoever during any match. No earpieces, cameras, spectator gestures, electronics, etc. No chicanery with the pieces or the clocks. The five Devious players did not communicate with each other in any way during the games.

2. Matches were played as outlined above. No game or match was interrupted.

3. Maria did, in fact, win all her games, as was all but guaranteed.

4. This is not a "trick question" where the explanation is a joke or play on words. The five Devious players just sat down and played their respective matches.

Problem:

1. What was the plan Devious came up with that allowed it to win all all ten matches?

2. What was the final score of every match? (Your team gets 1 point for each win at a board; none for each loss; and 1/2 point for each draw. So your team score for a match can range from 5-0 to 0-5 by half-points.)

Hint 1

An intimate knowledge of the game of chess and its strategy is not essential to solving this problem.

Hint 2

The final score was the same in all ten matches.

Answer 1

I think the answer is as follows

Given that Maria would win all her matches then the other four players just needed to achieve an overall score of 2-2 in their matches to ensure a 3-2 win for Devious High School in each competition.

They can achieve this by pairing up the players on Boards 2 and 3 and also pairing the players on Boards 4 and 5. Then each player just copies the moves of the opponent on the paired board. For example, if Devious play white on Board 2 and black on Board 3 then the player on Board 2 copies the moves made by white on Board 3 and the player on Board 3 copies the moves made by black on Board 2. Thus you have two copies of the same game and Devious is guaranteed to either have one win or two draws on each pair of boards.