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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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnus Carlsen would have a real hard time drawing stockfish on a phone 1/100 games.

My impression from reading about chess engines online is that drawing is far simpler if that is your explicit goal. Several comments online on different websites claims that they are able to end games in draws against stockfish.

I'd humbly suggest that those anonymous comments put up or shut up.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#92

I wonder why everyone focuses on electronic communication and wearable devices. There are tons of acoustic side channels if an accomplice watches the live stream outside of the playing venue. Set up construction site and use a hammer just loud enough to be just barely heard from the inside. Bird sounds, music, the possibilities are endless. Very few bits of information need to be transmitted for the best three moves.

it's possible there was a banging of trash cans too lol

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#93

I wonder why everyone focuses on electronic communication and wearable devices. There are tons of acoustic side channels if an accomplice watches the live stream outside of the playing venue. Set up construction site and use a hammer just loud enough to be just barely heard from the inside. Bird sounds, music, the possibilities are endless. Very few bits of information need to be transmitted for the best three moves.

Easy, just delay the stream by 5 minutes, they already do that in egames.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#94

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 know very little about chess. Do computers play like top humans? Or different stylistically? ie - if you were a top player and looking at the moves of an opponent, could you discern if the style was more similar to a top rated human or a top rated computer?

There are some grandmaster chess streamers who play random people on the internet and pick up rather quickly when they are playing against a chess engine instead of a person.

In a nutshell, computers do some things that are very unlikely for humans to do. A lot of the play is similar, but some things are outliers and high level chess players will notice the unusual style and high accuracy moves of a person assisted by a computer.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#96
There is little hope for stopping cheaters.

example: Moon Ribas, an artist, has a small vibrating sensor embedded permanently in her feet that communicates wirelessly and vibrates whenever there is an earthquake somewhere in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Ribas#Seismic_Sense

The idea can be extended to an implanted device that receives subtle signals from the user to have a representation of the game state and communicates back through gentle sensations.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#97

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]…

Wow, somehow I missed this. Pretty wild accusations from Magnus and Hikaru on this. Hans just had a horrific tournament in his last attempt, which makes this whole thing pretty interesting. Hans didn't play engine perfect lines when beating Magnus in the Sinquefield Cup, though he obviously played extremely accurately.

Do you have a source of Magnus accusations? He seems to have withdrawn relatively quietly, perhaps consciously trying to refrain from cheating accusations.

Hikaru was less reserved on the other hand. He called Hans's post-game interview analysis sub-2700 level after Hans Neiman badly mis-evaluated several positions.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#98

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 know very little about chess. Do computers play like top humans? Or different stylistically? ie - if you were a top player and looking at the moves of an opponent, could you discern if the style was more similar to a top rated human or a top rated computer?

I can't find a citation but I recall that computers agreed with the moves of grandmasters from the pre-computer era about 60% of the time.

Generally, the biggest heuristic for identifying cheating is identifying somebodies moves share statistical similarity to the top moves of common engines (Especially stockfish). This doesn't really work after a single game, but anybody playing the top move of stockfish 90% of the time over 100 games is a cheater. Nobody that isn't cheating can do that. Cheaters are savvy though, they will notice in a position there are maybe 5 decent moves they can choose from, so for just that position they will choose stockfish's 5th choice. Or maybe they'll only check the engine at the most critical moments of the game and turn the engine off and play normally afterwards. Notice that the person being debated in this article is somebody with a history of cheating, the evidence they cheated in this specific game is likely not as good as the evidence they are just generally a cheater.

On top of this more empirical analysis, there's more subjective analysis. Humans tend to try to simplify games when they're ahead to reduce computational complexity, but computers don't do this as it's not a good strategy for a computer. Humans will tend to follow a narrative and follow a general idea throughout a game with ideas they calculated earlier in the game or in their preparation, whereas computers don't care about narratives and will completely switch plans on a dime. In the endgame the computer starts having a LOT of winning moves that it hasn't calculated to the end and can start making very offbeat choices, whereas humans tend to use a set of rote memorised strategies that are known wins. Again though, a skilled cheater realises all this and will choose weaker more human-like moves that are probably the engines 2nd or 3rd choice.

There's also metadata. Cheaters usually take a few seconds to think about a move that a human would make instantly (this came up in the article where it took the cheater 20 seconds to make their first move), they probably exhibit different browser/app interaction habits. Humans have all sorts of particularities about UI interaction and time management. A lot of people play blitz and bullet chess because cheaters struggle to cheat convincingly under time pressure.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hikaru's accusation or speculations have also been mocked on Twitter. Who by? Other 2750+ players? If not, then who cares? Hikaru's analysis of the chess is correct. You can analyze the positions with an engine to confirm. I checked, since they had the engine off after the Alireza game. For example Hans (with white) said: "I did not believe in this position for black. I just don't see any universe where this is hol…

Still complete speculation, you need far more than bits of an interview analyzed by a popular GM for viewership to accuse someone in a professional OTB game in the legendary Sinquefield Cup. You need real evidence of cheating. What concerns me is that we won't know the truth as GothamChess said. I am onboard with condemning Hans in the strongest terms if he was caught cheating in OTB game, this just seems like the Bo…

I'm not accusing him of cheating.

Hans' interviews have been off. This isn't speculation. The positions are right there in the interviews, analyze them and see. Hans says zig and the analysis shows zag.

That's it. That's the whole conversation. Someone said the interviews were bad, you disagreed citing Levy and King, I explained what they (and I!) liked about the interviews and pointed out that the actual chess analysis was, in fact, bad.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#100

Honestly a Faraday cage should be a very good defense against most attacks including this one. Moderately expensive for a good quality one, probably only affordable for high stakes tournaments (it shouldn't be expensive in terms of materials: a very simple sheet metal cage with adequate electrical connection technique should be enough, but I assume it's too specialized to be cheap -- plus care must be taken with open…

I think having competitors pass through metal detectors would be helpful.
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