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Chess’s Cheating Crisis

theguardian.com

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Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#141

Post by gowld »

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.)

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

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#142

Post by pierrefermat1 »

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.

It's hilarious you think this after such blatant scandals in cycling coming out.

If you ever competed at a high level or spent enough time researching commonly available drugs and how testing is conducted it becomes obvious of what's really happening. This isn't even mentioning people with large budgets who have completely undetectable designer ones

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#143

Post by gowld »

The crisis is really that humans are desperately trying to "compete" at a game that computers have soundly defeated human players at. The answer, endorsed by leaders like Kasparov, is abandon competitive human chess. Embrace the computers for competition, and use ELO for entertainment matchups. I don't care if I'm playing a "cheater", as long as the cheater is playing at my level.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#144

Post by TheHypnotist »

mellosouls wrote: post #94

Why would anybody do this? It's not even like cheating in athletics where you can plausibly claim to be doing it yourself (just using illegal enhancements). Here it is something else doing it for you. Bizarre that anybody would take pride from doing it, especially considering the risk of being found out.

Just imagine the type of person who then pays for cheats in any number of online games. Sometimes they have to jump through hoops (or pay) just to get another account active. It's just a thing that some people do for whatever reason.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#145

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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.

If world records were set virtually across the board in all sports with doping, and there are athletes achieving or beating these marks...

For endurance sports, the EPO effect is pretty well documented based on its arrival in the early-to-mid nineties. It's multiple percents to perhaps 10% of an advantage, which is basically "game over" for the natural athlete.

If there are a ton of athletes performing at levels that EPO athletes were... what other conclusion is there?

Blood passport basically exists to keep the cheating out of control (to levels where thickened blood kills people overnight with brain clots), but either the BBC or guardian had a reporter do microdosing and tested with formal testing and their blood passport numbers stayed "in bounds".

Steroids is a similar game changer for fast twitch. The current sprinting records are so far above what Ben Johnson was doing.

Consider the rarity of high-level cheaters being busted in soccer, tennis, basketball, and American football, where the monetary rewards are 100-1000x more than olympic athlete success.

Consider all the hollywood action stars and the efficacy of PEDs in achieving a necessary look for a multimillion dollar role. Is there drug testing in hollywood?

And PEDs absolutely have penetrated all scholastic levels of athletics/sport with the easy availability via the internet and the sports-crazed overachievement OCD of athlete parents.

Sports are a theatric illusion.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#146

Post by sudosysgen »

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…

There are special chess engines that don't play the optimal move but instead try to imitate a play style or some other constraint.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#147

Post by sudosysgen »

dalbasal wrote: post #131
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.

Not really. There are chess engines that are indistinguishable and made to imitate the play style of a top tier human player.

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#148

Post by cdelsolar »

dalbasal wrote: post #131
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.

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

Re: Chess’s Cheating Crisis

#150

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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…

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 altitude tents.

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