just hire Kamsky
Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
101–110 of 122 posts
Re: Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
#102If the system suspects a cheater, maybe it can just match them up against a GM (or beyond GM) bot to confirm?
You normally specify a rating range of the opponent you're searching for, so if the cheater isn't targetting GM level himself (in which case it's happening already), the system can't really do it.
Of course the system could go ahead anyway, displaying a fake rating - within the search criteria - for this GM / bot, but given that there are always false positives (and it would have to be done for merely suspected accounts, as you said yourself), it would essentially mean deliberately pairing some innocent players against, well, effectively cheaters. Which kind of defeats the core purpose.
Re: Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
#103I’ve seen a video of Magnus Carlsen playing on Lichess before. Does Irwin ever accidentally flag him or people like him? Do these sorts of folks have to be verified in some fashion?
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Re: Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where did you experience rampant cheating? I don't remember any particular problems back when I played on ICC in my middle/high school days, and modern equivalents like chess.com and lichess seem to do a relatively good job at catching cheaters. I might have just gotten lucky though.
I never notice cheaters too, but I only play around 1500 FIDE rating. The cheaters are around 2300 FIDE or even higher.
I'm of similar strength, and I have occasionally been informed that some account got banned for cheating (you receive a notification because the system restores your lost rating points after that).
But it's definitely affected less than 1 in a 1000 games for me. Of course
I might have still gotten beaten by cheaters that went undetected of course, especially if they stopped cheating or lost interest in the whole thing leaving the site before they'd get caught.
Re: Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open up high level bot in another tab. Play their moves and copy what the bot does in response. I have no idea why people do it, it's not even like video game cheats where it gives people a advantage but you're still in control - you're literally just copying.
I’d have to guess, but fake internet points? The ability to say “I’m ranked 5th at blah blah chess website”. Maybe it’s not even to others but just to themselves.
The (not visible, but presumed and imagined) frustration of the player on the other end gives some people joy.
Re: Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
#106I love chess. At my absolute best, I had a over-the-board USCF rating of 2156. I never made it to master no matter how hard I tried. So, ticked off, I gave up serious play. Years go by and while I'm no where near as good these days, I started enjoying playing again. And, then I start running into people online who were clearly using engines instead of their own skills and wits. Now, I only pay with friends and over-t…
I don’t understand this sentiment. The rating of a player will reflect their strength, regardless of whether they are an unaided human, a full computer, or a human with some heuristic to consult an engine. Whatever the player is doing, their rating will reflect their average strength, and the website matches us to players of similar rating. Whether or not a player is pure human, pure engine, or centaur, we get matche…
> Pure cheaters will quickly skyrocket to the top of the ratings
Unless they cheat in unrated games, or discard their account and create another before the rating ascends too high (not necessarily for that purpose, but to avoid detection).
Re: Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
#107I don’t understand what someone gets out of winning chess games by cheating. It would actually make me feel worse about myself.
In a sibling comment there is already a very adequate answer. To give the opposite answer, why you should not cheat. Chess is fun if you play against players of similar strengt. Mostly a score of around 50% will be what you get. If you have a 1400 rating, you can have fun games against 1400 players. If you cheat and go towards 2300 rating, you will still have a score of 50% against other 2300 players. But all the fun…
Most cheaters probably do get bored pretty quickly, but even if they only cheat for, say, 5 games, by the time they're over and done with it another curious cheater takes their place to see what it's like.
So yes the turnover may be pretty high, but it doesn't make much difference from the perspective of a regular user.
Re: Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you cheat at chess? Serious question… there are fixed rules that govern the game, certainly a piece of software or in the human case 3rd party observer should be able to enforce them? In other words, given a list of moves, you can write a program that returns `valid` if the set of moves is allowed or `invalid` if it is not, no?
Open up high level bot in another tab. Play their moves and copy what the bot does in response. I have no idea why people do it, it's not even like video game cheats where it gives people a advantage but you're still in control - you're literally just copying.
They don't even need to open another tab. There is at least one Google Chrome extension specifically for cheating in chess (which the creators pretty much openly admit - their YT channel features a blatant cheating tutorial video).
I've reported this extension for abuse - since it's obviously unethical, goes against the rules of the websistes it's supposed to be used on, plus the description in the Store is misleading, as it's deliberately vague and unlike their YT profile, it cautiously doesn't mention cheating at all. Obviously it hasn't been taken down though.
Re: Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
#109I love chess. At my absolute best, I had a over-the-board USCF rating of 2156. I never made it to master no matter how hard I tried. So, ticked off, I gave up serious play. Years go by and while I'm no where near as good these days, I started enjoying playing again. And, then I start running into people online who were clearly using engines instead of their own skills and wits. Now, I only pay with friends and over-t…
I have been playing daily for about two years now on Lichess and over-the-board whenever the opportunity presents itself. I find people who burn the clock when their game takes a turn for the worse far more frustrating than those who cheat their way to victory. At least with the cheaters, the game is over pretty quickly, so I can move onto a game which is actually enjoyable.
> At least with the cheaters, the game is over pretty quickly
Yeah, unless you want to play a longer game than a 5 minute blitz.
Re: Irwin – the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Playing people who take 10 seconds every move— whether an obvious “only move” or the most complicated situations… and that pick the move that stockfish makes almost all of the time… are cheating.
Depends I like to slow play. It can frustrate someone to play quicker and make mistakes
The point is not that they take their time, the point is that they spend roughly the same fixed amount of time for difficult moves (coming up with seemingly brilliant ones now and then) as trivial ones (even in positions when there's physically only one legal move). This is one of the red flags implying somebody is cheating, and doesn't even understand the position on the board. Their pace is monotonous because the time they need for copying the move over to their engine and then the engine's response is more or less constant.