Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chess’s Cheating Crisis

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 284 posts

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#121

Post by dalbasal »

3np wrote: post #12

> Sarah Longson, a former British ladies’ champion Athletic sports aside, does anyone know the motivation between gender-segregated leagues in games like chess?

Basically to get more women into chess.

They still play in non-segregated tournaments, get regular titles and such. Women's chess titles, tournaments and such an extra.

Think of it like having a local league with its own rating system and titles. Countries have this, and it exists alongside international, fide titles and ratings.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#122

Post by Domenic_S »

_wldu wrote: post #100

What computer programs do people use to cheat? I do not play chess with other people, but I do play against the computer. I've thought of writing a program to make moves for me to see how it would fair against the computer. I'm interested in how the program interacts with the board? Does it take screenshots? Does it interact via an API?

If you want to just goof around, use any chess program (such as OSX's built-in Chess.app) set at the hardest difficulty, and play the opposite color from your real game. Then copy your opponent's moves to Chess.app, and make the computer's moves in the real game.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#123

Post by cratermoon »

the-dude wrote: post #47
noneeeed wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a lot of online conversations recently where the default assumption is that every Olympic sprinter, every cyclist or swimmet, basically every elite athlete is doping. It's pretty sad that we are in a world where you can work incredibly hard to make the most of natural talents and many people will assume you cheated.

This may be partially or wholly true. Athletes and the public have a different interpretation of what doping actually is. The public thinks of doping as taking performance enhancing substances. Athletes think of doping as crossing the specified threshold/limit. I have heard this interpretation on TV from a well connected Dutch cycling journalist ( Mart Smeets ). Every athlete takes performance enhancing substances.

The public also thinks of doping as taking something that has effects active during the competition, but many PEDs are not like that.

The example I know best is steroids. A younger athlete, before getting into high-level competition, or during the offseason, does a "cycle" or two of steroids. The effect is to build more strength or size. When the athlete ends the steroid cycle some, but not all of the strength or size is lost, assuming they continue training.

What this means is that they have a foundation to build on that's already above what the athlete who doesn't use steroids has. A year or two down the road, there's absolutely no trace of steroids in the athlete's system, so they easily pass drug tests. However, the benefit was already gained.

So for athletes the limits are time-bounded, not dose-bounded.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#124

Post by chance_state »

Sodman wrote: post #38
3np wrote: post #12

> Sarah Longson, a former British ladies’ champion Athletic sports aside, does anyone know the motivation between gender-segregated leagues in games like chess?

There is no male-only chess, women can also compete. Female-only chess clubs and tournaments are a way to encourage women to get into chess in a less hostile, more welcoming environment. Ultimately it's an attempt to bring more diversity to the male-dominated game. In 2019 for example, women made up a higher percentage of chess players then ever before, but still only accounted for 14.6% [0] of registered players. [0…

Are they trying to hit 50% female participation?

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#126

Post by cratermoon »

Tor3 wrote: post #76
the-dude wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be partially or wholly true. Athletes and the public have a different interpretation of what doping actually is. The public thinks of doping as taking performance enhancing substances. Athletes think of doping as crossing the specified threshold/limit. I have heard this interpretation on TV from a well connected Dutch cycling journalist ( Mart Smeets ). Every athlete takes performance enhancing substances.

> Every athlete takes performance enhancing substances. No. I was one and I didn't. And I knew a lot of athletes. I know how most of them were thinking. What you said is simply not true.

Another question worth asking: did any of the athletes you knew take PEDs at any time in their past, but stopped once they approached a level where getting caught would mean the end of their career?

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#128

Post by specialist »

Idea: Replay games to detect cheating.

Create a fleet of chess programs, with typical resource constraints (CPU, RAM, time).

Have the chess programs replay recorded games.

Compare the suggested moves with the player's actual moves.

Divine some kind probability that player is cheating.

Extra credit for replaying that player's history of games thru the same fleet. Was the player consistent? Were there spikes of cheating?

Until there's a better phrase, I'll call this "parallel construction".

It'd be neat to run the fleet of chess programs during live matches.

Caveat: I know nothing about chess, so someone is probably doing "parallel construction" for cheat detection.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#129

Post by alasdair_ »

I noticed that poker was mentioned as well. Does anyone have more information on this? I know heads up limit is essentially solves and no-limit is “almost” solved but are poker bots really good enough to handle full ring NLHE at a high level?

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#130

Post by ddp26 »

I'm a pretty serious online chess player. I'm in the top 300 players on lichess in blitz.

Anecdotally, cheating is much more common on chess.com than lichess. This may be because chess.com is bigger and more visible.

There are also other reasons to use lichess - FOSS, better, simpler interface - so I encourage everyone here to make the switch.

Post reply on HN