During Thursday session...

During Thursday session, my players will have to play a giant chess game (think the first Harry Potter book/movie) against the BBEG lieutenant as part of a challenge
He absolutely want to win so he is going to cheat more and more during the game
To beat this challenge, the players just need to actually beat their opponent

What are some discreet way I can make the lieutenant cheat ?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_chess#Cheating_with_technology
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk
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Don't use a chess board, just describe the game to them. If they can see the board cheating is obvious, if they need to keep track of whats happened you can get away with a lot, I'd suggest making it obvious when he's close to winning though, e.g. A second queen or a third rook makes a move

No chess board is a good idea
But how would they know what they can play ?
>I'd suggest making it obvious when he's close to winning though, e.g. A second queen or a third rook makes a move
Yea, I have in the idea that the longer the game is, the more obvious the cheat

Make them come to the board one at a time, and unable to observe it alone; eventually they ~should~ start mapping the board in pencil and paper, at which point they'll catch the discrepancies of movement during the swaps.

Karazhan chess event

>"fooling" the players by obscuring what their characters would easily see
Come on, man.

>Karazhan chess event
The cheats are too obvious

>Cheating in real life as effectively as the made up character

I suppose they need to physically beat up the GM each encounter as well.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_chess#Cheating_with_technology

Modern chess tournaments have a big problem with people cheating by having a computer tell them what moves to make. Have him do something similar. It doesn't have to be a computer telling him what moves to make, just someone much better at chess than he is.

A dwarf would be fitting

How will you keep it interesting for the rest of the party during this?

I'd use a turkey with greatly enhanced intelligence.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

Maybe the BBEG has a mage or something he keeps around who happens to be pretty damn good at chess. Mage casts invisibility and watches the game while slipping hints for the BBEG. Gives the characters a chance discover dude's cheating too.

That's not even remotely comparable. Your example is asking the player to have the physical traits of their character. The example I was replying to is just being purposefully unclear as a GM in order to fool the players when their characters would obviously see that there are two fucking queens on the field. When you're the GM, you're the eyes and ears of the player's characters. Laughing at a player for walking his character into a door that you didn't tell him was there isn't clever, it's just a dick thing to do.

This is a good one

>How will you keep it interesting for the rest of the party during this?
The 5 of them will play against the lieutenant

I hope you are never my DM on a few different levels.

Well, I'm shit at chess, I'd like to make it more of a challenge to beat my NPC

Disguise the king as another piece, and another piece as the king.

When the players have "checkmated" him, he reveals the "king" as actually a bishop or something, and now they have to scramble to checkmate what they thought was a bishop way on the other side of the board.

Make it part of the rules that those pieces left standing is still legal, and any that fall (for any number of reasons) is out of the game.
And then have one of the lieutenants have absolutely horrible body odor. The kind that could knock out elephants.

Then grab a laptop or a tablet or even your phone and mirror the game against a hard AI.

Hell the cheating part could be that he's using an ancient spirit to guide him.

Change the rules during the game

Working from this, you could have the BBEG be absolutely retarded in chess, and not know anythin about sacrifices, and get angry at the 'air' when your PCs take a piece, and then confused as to why the soldiers didn't fight back. Have it slowly reveal to the players that someone else is actually playing for him.

Maybe he's always been bad and he was looked down upon because of it, sorta like traditional families today and whatever sport happens to be popular in that country. That's if you want some backstory for your BBEG.