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Chess’s Cheating Crisis

theguardian.com

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Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#131

Post by dalbasal »

specialist wrote: post #128

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 cheatin…

It's pretty easy to determine if a player "is* an engine, and all the moves are computer generated. Where it gets difficult is more subtle cheating.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#132

Post by hengri »

specialist wrote: post #128

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 cheatin…

It's much simpler than that. Every chess move has an accuracy score where 100% means that it is optimal play according to the top chess engine(which can easily beat any human). Anyone with an abnormally high accuracy is a cheater. Anyone with a high accuracy simply needs to verify who they are a la twitter style.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#133

Post by alasdair_ »

medium_burrito wrote: post #120
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.

It's hard to assume anything else. If you are not cheating, you are not trying hard enough to win. If you look at a chart of when EPO became available, and all those good knowledgeable DDR sport med docs became available on the free market, there's this discontinuous drop in world records fro pretty much all endurance sports. Notice the discontinuity around 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,000_metres_world_reco…

That mechanical doping suspension was interesting to learn about. The rider wasn’t caught with a motorized bike, instead the bike was found in their pit and (supposedly) didn’t belong to the rider but due to the rules the rider was treated as if it was their bike.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#134

Post by selectodude »

Tor3 wrote: post #85
parthdesai wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, i=I don't mean this in a demeaning manner, were you an elite athlete competing in olympics, playing in NBA or premier league? When people say every athlete takes PEDs, it's usually athletes at the very top of their game. And yes, when there are millions or billions (if you're Cristiano Ronaldo or Lebron James) of dollars at stake, athlete's will take any advantage possible. Do I think every professional athlet…

I had just reached an international level, but I was never at the olympic level. But a whole group I trained with for a time all became professionals, and some of them competed in the olympics. I knew them then before they got there, and I knew their level and their attitudes, and I saw nothing in their professional performances indicating that they had at any point moved into doping. How sure can one be? Never total…

That's all really great, but it's possible (even likely) that they progressed because they doped and you didn't progress because you didn't.

It's simply physiologically impossible to accomplish what these athletes are doing without assistance.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#135

Post by alasdair_ »

wildmanx wrote: post #58
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.

That's depending on what you consider a "performance enhancing substance". With basic food and drinks, we surely all agree that that's not the case. But the line starts to get blurry with supplements. Whey? Creatine? Caffeine? Supplement stores are full of this stuff, and a lot is really just a waste of money and exists to milk the amateur gym bro cash cow. But some of those things help. And eventually you cross the…

> With basic food and drinks, we surely all agree that that's not the case.

It’s worth noting here that the first Olympic doping suspension was for drinking a beer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Olympic_Games

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#136

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

pmontra wrote: post #45
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 are so many more men playing that the chances of finding a woman strong enough to win a top tournament are slim. We would have men-only tournaments with a reverse gender ratio. Then there are commercial and opportunity reasons. The winner of a women-only tournament is always a women and sponsors can show a winning woman to their customers. Furthermore it could help to recruit new female players. I'd like to hea…

Alexandra Botez and others have talked about it at considerable length. Suffice it to say, none of them feel discouraged to play by the existence of women's titles. And they all have pretty horrible stories of harassment or even assault growing up as young women in the chess world. Women's titles are not some sort of value reducing participation trophies, and the chess world is far more hostile as a status quo than you're assuming.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#137

Post by FR10 »

ddp26 wrote: post #130

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.

I had no idea lichess was FOSS and that it was written mostly in Scala [0]. I've been playing in chess.com just because it was the first platform I saw. Thank you, I'm definitely making the switch.

[0] https://github.com/ornicar/lila

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#138

Post by nabla9 »

noneeeed wrote: post #27
dalbasal wrote: post #18

“ Paranoia has become the culture ” This. For every actual cheating incident, there are many paranoid suspicions. Chess demands an intense focus, and this makes players react emotionally (see chess tantrums). Paranoia is one of these reactions. This "culture of paranoia" is generally pervasive, not just in chess. Once a paranoia inducing phenomenon (like cheating) exists, the paranoia pervades. People know fb & googl…

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.

WADA estimates that 10% of Olympic athletes are doping.

Anti doping agencies are always behind in doping research and many athletes have access to the best clinics there are.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#139

Post by unholiness »

specialist wrote: post #128

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 cheatin…

This comment has strong "why does need a journal" vibes...

Online chess areas like lichess and chess.com absolutely have automated cheat detection which they consider along with with reports in automated banning of accounts. They consider not just whether the player is playing the excellent moves (something common at any level and very common at high levels), but also how a deep search is needed to evaluate that move, whether other obvious moves were available, how long was taken to play the move, if the position is common, etc. When these serial cheaters are banned, the sites even refund rating points to everyone who lost to them.

However, the issue of isolated cheating incidents is still a big deal, even if the serial obvious cheaters can be detected.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#140

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

medium_burrito wrote: post #120
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.

It's hard to assume anything else. If you are not cheating, you are not trying hard enough to win. If you look at a chart of when EPO became available, and all those good knowledgeable DDR sport med docs became available on the free market, there's this discontinuous drop in world records fro pretty much all endurance sports. Notice the discontinuity around 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,000_metres_world_reco…

> If you are not cheating, you are not trying hard enough to win.

I wonder if we're using different definitions of "win" here. To my way of thinking, if a person has cheated, they didn't win, regardless of what the official judges conclude.

(Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the point you're trying to make.)

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