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Chess’s Cheating Crisis

theguardian.com

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Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#181

Post by slingnow »

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…

Did you think the article was stating that no one knew how to detect cheaters?

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#182

Post by nottorp »

lapetitejort wrote: post #173
bjourne wrote: post #77

I had a math exam a long while ago. One of those three hour long and the professor had me seated by myself in the math library. So I asked: - There's tons of math books here. How can you know I won't cheat? - Bjourne, do you intend to cheat? - No, of course not. - Alright. Good luck on your exam!

For some classes, especially as you get higher in fields, no amount of open books will help you in an exam. If you're able to figure out the material using a book then and there while not knowing it before, you deserve the grade.

My lowest level graph theory exam at university was "bring anything you think will help you". Including our teacher's book which had all the course contents and then some.

Of course, it only helped you if you had gone through the material a couple times and knew (and mostly understood) exactly what was there, and you used the book to refresh minor details.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#183

Post by wmeredith »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #110
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.

Part of it from my layman's perspective is that today, even home exercising frequently involves protein shakes. As you go into even basic body building or training, you start taking more and more "Stuff". There's no clear obvious intuitive big line between "natural talent and hard work" and "illegal chemical cheating". Reading the details of the tests involved a few years ago made me believe the line we draw is thin,…

> As you go into even basic body building or training, you start taking more and more "Stuff".

This is because there's not a lot of money in telling people to lift heavy stuff that's literally all around us and eat commonly available protein-rich foods. What is there to sell? In comes the gadgets and supplements.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#184

Post by vokep »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #110
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.

Part of it from my layman's perspective is that today, even home exercising frequently involves protein shakes. As you go into even basic body building or training, you start taking more and more "Stuff". There's no clear obvious intuitive big line between "natural talent and hard work" and "illegal chemical cheating". Reading the details of the tests involved a few years ago made me believe the line we draw is thin,…

How are protein shakes and such 'stuff' at all approaching performance enhancing chemicals? Performance enhancing chemicals make the body do things it wouldn't normally do, directly modifying behavior to be different than it could be without that substance. Protein shakes are just providing nutrients so the body can make full use of exercise. Giving the body a nutrient rich liquid food is very different from a drug.

The one that seems a bit borderline but perhaps small enough effect and also already so commonly used by the general population anyways that its not too reasonable to consider it to be "doping" which would be caffeine.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#185

Post by medium_burrito »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #140
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…

> 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.)

To paraphrase the only real rule in another famous sport: "The winning player shall be the first player that wins."

If you are the top of any sport, there's money, fame, groupies, etc. There's a real incentive to do it.

Moreover, the audience wants to see superhumans and world records broken. To paraphrase Futurama about women's basketball "good fundamentals, but can't dunk". The governing bodies of all pro sports look the other way.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#186

Post by tutfbhuf »

reidmcy wrote: post #178
anbende wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, apparently Chess24 has an engine that will let you play against a simulated Magnus Carlsen at various stages and skill-levels of his career. So you can set some engines not to pick perfect moves but to pick moves consistent with a particular rating or style...

I don't think Play Magnus is close to indistinguishable, it's a modified version of Stockfish on the backend, having the same rating doesn't mean you have the same style

Yup. It's absolutely possible to determine whether you play versus a strength reduced/weak engine or a human. Humans make human plans and play according to human best practices, which you can find in chess literature. Engines, however, do not make long term plans and often play very inhuman (perfectly precise, unobvious tactical) moves, that often suprises even on grandmaster level.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#187

Post by medium_burrito »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #150
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…

With the carbon fiber shoes, there is now essentially mechanical, uh, "assistance" in running. Improvement of equipment is always a massive gray area. Cycling (aside from electric motors) has aerodynamic bikes, wind tunnel access. XC skiing has environmentally bad teflon wax. Swimming, theoretically the most naked/equipment-less sport, has sharkskin suits and buoyancy aids. There are other advantages like expensive a…

Wax and aerodynamic equipment certainly make a difference, but a bucket of fresh Amgen red blood cells is even better- and for cycling at least, works uphill, whereas aero doesn't matter under 18mph.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#188

Post by medium_burrito »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #168
gowld wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 as…

quoth the late philosopher Mitch Hedburg:

"I just bought a 2-bedroom house, but I think I get to decide how many bedrooms there are, don't you? "Fuck you, real estate lady! This bedroom has an oven in it! This bedroom's got a lot of people sitting around watching TV. This bedroom's over in that guy's house! Sir, you have one of my bedrooms, are you aware? Don't decorate it!"

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#189

Post by sfblah »

georgiecasey wrote: post #117

I used to cheat on chess.com. It started as a small bit of cheating here and there, just checking every now and then if the move I was going to make was the best. Of course, the computer always had a better move and then I examine the line and told myself I probably would have thought of that! Like a drug, it escalated and I was checking moves all the time. I was never caught but I was ashamed and just stopped playin…

I recently quit online chess completely. The last straw was lichess sending me a warning because I pointed out to a guy he was obviously using an engine. The cheating just got tiresome. I’m going to go back to playing over the board with actual people.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#190

Post by ritchiea »

georgiecasey wrote: post #117

I used to cheat on chess.com. It started as a small bit of cheating here and there, just checking every now and then if the move I was going to make was the best. Of course, the computer always had a better move and then I examine the line and told myself I probably would have thought of that! Like a drug, it escalated and I was checking moves all the time. I was never caught but I was ashamed and just stopped playin…

Lichess will flag your account as a cheater w/o notifying you so that your opponents see the flag and avoid games. I know this because a friend of mine who is an average player got flagged that way after a stretch of games he won handily, including one against me where I checked computer analysis and noticed he made zero incorrect moves. A red flag popped up next to his screenname, I asked if he was aware of it and he said he couldn’t see it and got no notification of it.

I love the shadow flag method for cheaters because opponents can avoid games with them and the cheater may never figure out what the problem is.

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