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Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

incoherency.co.uk

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Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#221

Post by runnerup »

sharedfrog wrote: post #3

This is relevant to today's events because Magnus Carlsen just withdrew from a tournament[1] after yesterday's loss to a significantly lower rated opponent who had previously been suspended for cheating on chess.com. The tournament organizers have also implemented additional anti-cheating protocols starting today. Whatever comes out of these accusations, the chess world will sure enjoy its new infusion of drama. [1]…

I considered that you could have vibration sensor plates under player's feet but I can imagine several ways this "doesn't work":

1) Feet could be stimulated using electrical voltage (low level shocks).

2) Cheaters could put one foot on their knee and the system would only activate vibration when it was near a 90-degree rotation.

3) Cheaters could incorporate a vibration-damping polymer like sorbothane, probably a particularly low durometer to absorb vibrations between shoe insert and floor plate.

I believe the answer is going to have to be establishing a "secure" zone that can't be crossed by anyone without a full x-ray scan of all personal effects and mmWave scanners. If clothing blocks the mmWave scan, people would have to don lighter / more form-fitting clothing while going through the mmWave scanner, send their preferred clothes through the x-ray machine, and then swap into their desired clothes in a secure changing room/bathroom.

The main downside to this is increased cost; I'm not even sure how much this would cost to operate. And for which events would FIDE make this extra cost a requirement? Every FIDE rated event seems completely unreasonable - many of these are small local events with very little budget and lots of 1200 rated players. Perhaps any rated event which includes any of the top-10 players? Is there enough money at that level of chess to fund a requirement like this?

Still some potential for hiding cheating devices in relatively private areas like bathrooms, changing rooms, utility closets, or even "planting" large objects like potted plants/etc with hidden compartments. Most likely I'd imagine the player wouldn't grab these, they'd have someone they trust hide them in the weeks before the event and have a person retrieve these and then drop them in a secure bathroom stall/etc. These would be, for example, identical shoes to the ones they came in with.

Perhaps worth having players go through the scanners again right before they sit down at the table, including in the middle of the match if they take a bathroom break/etc. Maybe that would work, but I'm still concerned about the price -- that would need a separate analysis. How much money is available for each of these matches?

The stakes right now are pretty personal but if nations governments get involved in the cheating for reasons of national pride like they do for the Olympics[0] then I'm not sure anyone would be able to stop the cheating.

Another strategy might be to change the format of the top level of chess to "allow" cheating by giving everyone access to whatever engine they want, powered by identical hardware and watt-limited. So the competition would be "man+machine" vs "man+machine". There's been some chat about this but I'm not sure that matches wouldn't be so insanely even that you'd need 300+ games to build a reasonable confidence interval so that you can even determine which player "won". Currently the TCEC (highest level engine vs. engine championship) uses 22 games per matchup to determine a clear result. Even that would be excessive.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(2017_film)

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chess_Engine_Championship#....

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#222

Post by gverrilla »

Theodores wrote: post #206
michaelwm wrote: post #5

Though I'm not much of a poker player myself, I am friends with many professionals who have found success both online and offline, in games from pot-limit omaha to no-limit hold-em. Cheating in online poker has been around for many years, with varying success by online gaming companies to implement anti-cheat measures in their software. With recent developments in AI, there is renewed discussion about cheating as the…

In my circle of friends I have one or two that will take the option to cheat, to this day. This was fine during school days, but, as an adult, I question the behaviour. This is at cards (Bridge) and Scrabble with some quick hands of normal card games if there is a break or insufficient time for a 'Bridge Rubber'. My counter strategy is to win fairly and squarely. My cheating friends are obligated to spend a lot of ef…

Cheaters ruin games, it's never "fine", but sociopathic behavior.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#223

Post by runnerup »

veidelis wrote: post #217
sharedfrog wrote: post #3

This is relevant to today's events because Magnus Carlsen just withdrew from a tournament[1] after yesterday's loss to a significantly lower rated opponent who had previously been suspended for cheating on chess.com. The tournament organizers have also implemented additional anti-cheating protocols starting today. Whatever comes out of these accusations, the chess world will sure enjoy its new infusion of drama. [1]…

I don't understand why a GM would need to explain some of his moves precisely and with a deep understanding of the position as some commentators here point out. Why is that so indicative of cheating? It's known that classical chess has a lot of theory, and Hans himself admits that he checked an engine line the evening before the game. So what? Here's the quote: " I didn’t guess it, but by some miracle I checked this…

It's just one signal among others. All other GM's who have beat Magnus in classical format tournaments have been able to explain themselves very clearly. This guy can't. He might be a more "intuitive" player, or he might be cheating.

There's no smoking gun to show laypeople like you and I but people familiar with the scene and its norms do find this to be a salient point of data against Hans.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#224

Post by ebiester »

veidelis wrote: post #217
sharedfrog wrote: post #3

This is relevant to today's events because Magnus Carlsen just withdrew from a tournament[1] after yesterday's loss to a significantly lower rated opponent who had previously been suspended for cheating on chess.com. The tournament organizers have also implemented additional anti-cheating protocols starting today. Whatever comes out of these accusations, the chess world will sure enjoy its new infusion of drama. [1]…

I don't understand why a GM would need to explain some of his moves precisely and with a deep understanding of the position as some commentators here point out. Why is that so indicative of cheating? It's known that classical chess has a lot of theory, and Hans himself admits that he checked an engine line the evening before the game. So what? Here's the quote: " I didn’t guess it, but by some miracle I checked this…

It's subtle, but the sheer amount of time that it takes to become a top level GM make it such that there's a bit of "GM Speak" that all of them seem to do. So, there is first a cultural variation: the way he speaks doesn't sound like the rest of the experts. By itself, it isn't damning.

However, people at the GM level also tend to have an ability to look at a position and remember what they were thinking at that point of time. They internalize lines in a way that is a branch of moves. So, in this case Be6! is such a sharp position that you would expect them to talk a bit through it because it takes a lot of prep.

Further, when they turned off Stockfish analysis, his analysis goes down sharply.

Further, he was banned from chess.com twice because he was cheating with an engine.

Further, when he was talking about a set of analysis, he made something up on the spot involving a match between Carlsen and GM Wesley So, and Wesley So said that what he had said was impossible for multiple reasons on another chess streamer's twitch.

It's a lot of little things that don't add up. It's like if you were in an interview and asking a developer to explain some code on their Github about ML, and they sounded like they didn't understand the basic principles of the model they coded. It doesn't mean they didn't write the code, but it casts suspicion.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#225

Post by tzs »

avip wrote: post #8
sharedfrog wrote: post #3

This is relevant to today's events because Magnus Carlsen just withdrew from a tournament[1] after yesterday's loss to a significantly lower rated opponent who had previously been suspended for cheating on chess.com. The tournament organizers have also implemented additional anti-cheating protocols starting today. Whatever comes out of these accusations, the chess world will sure enjoy its new infusion of drama. [1]…

This makes little sense no? With 200 ELO diff Hans should beat Magnus ~1/4 games.

Elo gives expected outcome in points, not wins. If the formula says ~1/4, it means you should get ~1/4 of the points, not ~1/4 of the wins.

If Hans were to score 1 point off Magnus in a 4 game match it would be far more likely to be be by drawing twice than by winning once.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#226

Post by sharedfrog »

lesuorac wrote: post #213
texasbigdata wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rookie question but don’t draws occur more than 20-25% of the time at this level? Or is that just a unique feature of chess versus say StarCraft. Restated, are sports specific ELO scores real? Alternatively phrased, does an X ELO score in one competitive endeavor represent the same relative strength as the same ELO in another subject?

> Restated, are sports specific ELO scores real? Alternatively phrased, does an X ELO score in one competitive endeavor represent the same relative strength as the same ELO in another subject? Yes and No. Yes but in the long term. ELO is a self-fulfilling prophecy so if your ELO states you should win say 30% of the games vs a different ELO but you win 50% your ELO rises until you have an ELO that states you should wi…

> No because not every sport starts ELO at the same baseline [...] (i.e. Lichess starts everybody with 1500, Chess.com starts everybody with 1000).

It's not just where they start - they actually use different rating systems, and neither of them is the actual Elo rating system. Chess.com uses Glicko and Lichess uses Glicko-2. This is also a big part of what makes comparing players from different player pools a bit meaningless.

What I think OP is asking is "If you used the same rating system in two different sports, would a 200 point difference mean the same thing?", for which I think the answer is "yes".

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#227

Post by cortesoft »

adanto6840 wrote: post #214
cortesoft wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is interesting… I don’t play a ton of poker at casinos, but I haVe played in probably a dozen or so tournaments at Hollywood Park and a few in Vegas… I have never once seen anyone see or request to see a mucked hand, although I have seen someone get yelled at by the dealer for trying to turn over another player’s mucked hand after the showdown.

Years ago I played live games quite often (Vegas), and I do still play a few times a year (also Vegas). I've seen players make the request maybe 20 times total, and probably had the request granted ~50% of the time. When denied, it's usually because the cards were already intermingled in the muck, but on a few occasions it was due to the requestor exhibiting some level of 'menacing/antagonizing intent' to begin with.…

I have definitely seen the dealer enforce the “show one, show all” rule. I tried googling around after your last comment, but wasn’t able to find any reference to a player’s right to see a mucked hand. Instead, I found a lot of articles about whether it is better play to show or muck losing hands, which implies it is the person’s choice.

Do you have any reference for the rule that a folded hand has to be shown on demand if play is over?

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#228

Post by blackboxlogic »

illwrks wrote: post #202
michaelwm wrote: post #5

Though I'm not much of a poker player myself, I am friends with many professionals who have found success both online and offline, in games from pot-limit omaha to no-limit hold-em. Cheating in online poker has been around for many years, with varying success by online gaming companies to implement anti-cheat measures in their software. With recent developments in AI, there is renewed discussion about cheating as the…

"I'm not sure how the world will respond." Naked poker/chess etc...

Don't forget the full body x-ray before each match.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#229

Post by gs17 »

runnerup wrote: post #221
sharedfrog wrote: post #3

This is relevant to today's events because Magnus Carlsen just withdrew from a tournament[1] after yesterday's loss to a significantly lower rated opponent who had previously been suspended for cheating on chess.com. The tournament organizers have also implemented additional anti-cheating protocols starting today. Whatever comes out of these accusations, the chess world will sure enjoy its new infusion of drama. [1]…

I considered that you could have vibration sensor plates under player's feet but I can imagine several ways this "doesn't work": 1) Feet could be stimulated using electrical voltage (low level shocks). 2) Cheaters could put one foot on their knee and the system would only activate vibration when it was near a 90-degree rotation. 3) Cheaters could incorporate a vibration-damping polymer like sorbothane, probably a par…

> I considered that you could have vibration sensor plates under player's feet but I can imagine several ways this "doesn't work":

There's also no reason to expect the shoe form factor to be used repeatedly. One cheater was accused of morse code blinks, although he also had a camera on him [0]. When people talk about vibrating shoes there's always someone joking about a wireless buttplug instead, which would probably not show up in the mmWave scan (I don't know exactly what they look like but I doubt they have huge antennas sticking out). A Faraday cage would go a lot further for the price than airport style scanners IMO (and make every match a cage match, which makes chess sound way cooler), but it's probably still overkill.

[0] https://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/chess-players-extr...

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#230

Post by lesuorac »

sharedfrog wrote: post #226
lesuorac wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Restated, are sports specific ELO scores real? Alternatively phrased, does an X ELO score in one competitive endeavor represent the same relative strength as the same ELO in another subject? Yes and No. Yes but in the long term. ELO is a self-fulfilling prophecy so if your ELO states you should win say 30% of the games vs a different ELO but you win 50% your ELO rises until you have an ELO that states you should wi…

> No because not every sport starts ELO at the same baseline [...] (i.e. Lichess starts everybody with 1500, Chess.com starts everybody with 1000). It's not just where they start - they actually use different rating systems, and neither of them is the actual Elo rating system. Chess.com uses Glicko and Lichess uses Glicko-2. This is also a big part of what makes comparing players from different player pools a bit mea…

> What I think OP is asking is "If you used the same rating system in two different sports, would a 200 point difference mean the same thing?", for which I think the answer is "yes".

Well, I agree with your points but I'm not sure that is what OP is trying to do.

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