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Chess’s Cheating Crisis

theguardian.com

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Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#161

Post by chillwaves »

alasdair_ wrote: post #133
medium_burrito wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like she was caught with a motorized bike.

> Van den Driessche had been taking part in the inaugural under 23 women’s event, which was won by Britain’s Evie Richards. The Belgian and European under 23 champion had gone in as a pre-race favourite but did not feature at the front. She was eventually forced off her bike on the final lap when she was struck by mechanical problems and ended up walking with her bike.

> Van den Driessche’s bike was taken for inspection along with several other bikes after the race. It quickly became apparent that something was wrong with her bike and news of the discovery quickly spread; however it is only this Sunday morning that they revealed their discovery. It gives Van den Driessche the dubious honour of being the first rider to be discovered to be using a motor. Incidentally, Van den Driessche’s brother Niels is currently suspended for doping.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci-confirms-motorised-dopi...

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#162

Post by AtlasBarfed »

ben509 wrote: post #21

> Perhaps thinking of Lance Armstrong, he added: “I was a big fan of a certain cyclist and a part of me understands the pressure to succeed at all costs. ..." Lance Armstrong didn't just cheat, he set up a whole doping ring.[1] The full report is at [2]. Section VI of the Reasoned Decision lays out his efforts to keep a lid on the whole thing. There are plenty of athletes who get caught up in doping due to the pressu…

So did Festina, and so did practically every other cycling team in the EPO-nuts 90s.

Armstrong has a toxic personality, but nevertheless he is the scapegoat of that generation of cycling. If you know cycling, there is a rotating cast of champions heralded for their clean competition that are then cast aside as scapegoats: Festina, Armstrong, Team Garmin, Team Sky.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#164

Post by Spinnaker_ »

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.

I'm curious what sport. My wife is a swimmer and had to make the choice to either dope and compete at an international level or give it up. She chose to give it up. And this wasn't a shock or anything. She knew the decision was coming since she first showed promise in high school.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#165

Post by nemo44x »

cratermoon wrote: post #123
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.

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 siz…

A lot of PED's also allow you to heal much faster.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#166

Post by oh_sigh »

hinkley wrote: post #157
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…

In professional cycling they do two blood draws for any competition. The first one they test now for any known substances, practices (transfusions are illegal, without a medical reason). The second one they save to re-test when new drugs come to light. A few notable professionals have had titles stripped for violations that were detected years after the event. Re-running the games (especially to check for new techniq…

I think it's important to note that the second blood draw is to detect drugs which are currently banned, but not known how to test for.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#167

Post by bluGill »

me_me_me wrote: post #61
bluGill wrote: post #28

> “In his games there were abnormalities, sequences that he played godlike, but there were blunders as well,” The is the secret to successful cheating: knowing where to use the engine and where to go on your own. It is easy to run engine evaluation after the fact and see if your moves always match up with the engine. However when sometimes they do an sometimes they don't it is hard to know if you just happened to stu…

Yes, but its not a strategy to win every game. It will make you play at slightly higher level. Also there are moves that if you don't understand will look odd - computer like. That is also how suspicion can be raised. Anecdotally i remember other cheating story. In online FPS like Counter Strike some top level players have been caught using aim enhancer (aimbot) that move a mouse towards a target. But they had it set…

It is enough to go from top 500 class to number 1 though. Obviously you need to be good first, but once you are that good you can sometimes quickly figure out the computers plan by looking. Remember the tree of possible moves in any games quickly gets far too wide for a computer (much less human) to search, but if you are given one move you can often see a plan that you didn't think of. (this plan might not be what the computer saw!)

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#168

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

gowld wrote: post #141
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

OK, but then almost no professional or Olympic athlete has won anything in the past 30 years.

> OK, but then almost no professional or Olympic athlete has won anything in the past 30 years.

I don't know what fraction of those athletes cheated. But I consider my definition of "win" to be reasonable regardless of how many competitors cheat.

This reminds me of a famous quote[0]:

> When Abraham Lincoln was asked by a prosecuting attorney, “How many legs does a sheep have?” He replied, “Four.” The attorney then asked, “If you called a sheep’s tail a leg, how many legs would he have?” Lincoln replied, “Four. Merely because you call a sheep’s tail a leg does not make it one.”

[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/11/15/legs/#:~:text=When%...

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#170

Post by dalbasal »

cdelsolar wrote: post #148
dalbasal wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

true, but more subtle cheating is more unlikely to impact the results of a big competition.

it is. Eg, catching blunders or discovering key moves. GM matches are determined by one or two of these
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