Georgian chess champion and grandmaster Gaioz Nigalidze has been thrown out of the Dubai Open Chess Tournament after he was caught cheating, the Daily Mail reports. Nigalidze was found to have been checking moves on a phone hidden in the bathroom.

According to the Mail, Nigalidze's opponent in the sixth round of the tournament—Armenia's Tigran Petrosian—grew suspicious when the two-time Georgian national champion kept getting up to go to the bathroom between moves.

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

"I informed the chief arbiter about my growing suspicions and asked him to keep an eye on Gaioz."

Officials checked the stall to which Nigalidze kept returning and found a phone hidden under toilet paper. It was running a chess-analysis app. Nigalidze denied ownership of the phone, the Mail reports, but it was logged into a social network under his name.

According to Dubai Chess, the tournament’s chief arbiter Mahdi Abdul Rahim will send a report on the incident to the International Chess Federation. Players found guilty of cheating face a three-year suspension from all sanctioned tournaments; repeat offenders face a 15-year suspension.

Photo via Chess DB. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.